It doesn't always work the way you think.

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I turned the corner sharply as the shotgun fired at me from behind.  It was a terrible shot, and it must have been really light shot as well.  A couple tiny bee bees hit the ground and one did bounce off the car parked on the corner.  I was fine, but for anyone that hasn't been shot at, well, trust me, it's a unique feeling.  That was the second shot the zombie took at me in what I figured was a five shot shotgun, at best.  It was a twelve gauge pump with a long barrel, probably for clay pigeons, so more than five shots would be unusual.  I think.  I'm was never into the sport, but to my knowledge, five is common.  I suppose there could've been one in the chamber when he started, so there could be six.  

But let's back up a sec, because I know you have questions.  You know how we've talked about how zombies are always different?  Well, the ones I'm around can do a lot of the things they could do before, if they had prior knowledge.  They can't learn anything, but if a zombie knew how to shoot when they were turned, then they can do it now too.  The devil is in the details though.  If they know how to shoot before, they can still shoot know, but aiming and breathing techniques are a different story.  But a gun is still a gun, and there are still lucky shots.  And a shot doesn't have to be nearly as lucky when it's a shotgun, but I digress.

 I had to jump the front bumper of a small mid-size car to take the corner sharply.  I sprinted to the door of a large home improvement store that I had taken refuge in.  I opened the door that I had framed in the front glass doors.  Glass doors just wouldn't serve my purpose, so I had to put in a new one.  Since it was a home improvement store, I had the material.  That's actually why I picked this spot.  I turned before I closed the door to make sure I was being followed.  Not to worry, the zombie was about twenty feet behind me.  You see they could run too, but not sprint, and they fell a lot.  I'll get into that later.  So I had gained some space in my sprint.  I closed the door to buy myself a bit of time, but didn't lock it.  And yes, they can open doors.  The entry of the store was a hallway that I framed out and covered with plywood.  It went about ten feet forward and then hung a ninety degree left.  It then extended about another twenty feet, but at the end there was another left turn, but it only extended about three feet.  The the inside of the turn didn't have any walls, so the idea was you came in the door and had to turn left and then there's a hallway with another left turn, so the person leading can go through the hallway and come out and then run back on the inside of the turn and shoot into the hallway via gun ports, trigger a trap, etc...  And that's what I did.  I made my first left and pulled a lever as I passed.  I had some bear traps that I stole from a hunting store mounted on a plank.  And when I pulled the lever, the plank fell and and there's all of the sudden four bear traps in the hallway, right after the corner.  The thing about these zombies is that once they're in pursuit, they really don't use any strategy, they just run right in. 

I turned the second left and looked through a peephole.  I had my pistol drawn and my hand on a trap lever.  My bear traps were only a partial success.  The original traps only had a small trigger pan.  I cut some sheet metal in a circle and mounted it to the pan, so the area was bigger now.  But they still had to step on the pan, and even enlarged, it was only about a quarter of the available space to step on.  I had witnessed mixed results.  About a third stepped right in and got stuck.  A few missed it completely.  About half just stepped in where the trigger wasn't and didn't set it off.  I couldn't make my pans any bigger, so I was out of ideas.  As a backup plan, I had a rack of metal spikes that I could trigger and have swing down and go through the gun ports in the side of the hallway.  If they missed the trap, I hit them with the spikes about ninety-five percent of the time.  The other five percent was nasty stuff, but I had made it so far, and I had to do it less often these days.

Technically, these people were alive.  About two weeks ago there was this strange disease that infected rats.  It was a little like rabies and caused them to come out and just claw and scratch and bite everything in sight.  It cycled in about three days and killed the rats, but the damage was done.  Somehow it managed to jump to humans, and in a matter of a day, three-quarters of the population was an angry zombie mess.  They didn't try to bite you, they just tried to kill you with whatever means available.  So far it had been two weeks, so it hadn't ran it's cycle and killed it's victims.  And like I said, they retained some of the skills that they had before the infection, and that was terrible.  They could all run and some could use guns.  All could swing whatever implement they could get there hands on.  They could open doors, navigate stairs, and I'd even seen some climb ladders.  Ladders!  Worse than that, they remembered to eat and drink.  They would drink in puddles, drink in ponds, and eat whatever they could get their hands on.  So I wasn't sure I was going to be able to starve them out.  The only weakness I've really identified so far is their hearing.  They weren't completely deaf, but it was pretty bad.  They would never hear you coming.  They can't even hear a gunshot from very far away, and the ear problem has their balance screwed up.  It's your inner ear that controls balance, and something is wrong with theirs.  If they ran, they fell a lot.  They didn't feel pain, so that was a curse and a blessing.  You couldn't wound them and they wouldn't stop since they didn't feel pain, but they didn't care for their own wounds and they didn't seem to have any sense of self-preservation.  In layman's terms, what that basically meant is that if you wounded them, they bled out most of the time.  But had to survive long enough for that to happen.  

But back to the matter at hand!  That matter being the zombie chasing me.  It turned the corner and didn't step on the trigger, but it did trip over the trap.  It fell right into the other two traps more forward and the traps triggered and one clamped down on each arm.  So all in all, that worked okay.  It was held and couldn't move.  Even better, its shotgun had fallen down the hallway and was out of reach.  I peaked around the corner cautiously to make sure it was okay.  The zombie was struggling to get free, but with both arms fully clamped in a bear trap, he couldn't even move much.  I leaned around the corner and lined up my shot.  I didn't want to waste ammo, so I shot it in the head and it finally quit moving.  I was pretty safe where I was, but I needed to get some more defenses.  I had only encountered one or two at a time that had followed me in here, and I wasn't sure what I'd do if there were more.  I also needed to work on my weapons situation.  I have a pretty good imagination, but I never thought that when the zombie apocalypse happened, that they'd be shooting at me.  Lame.