Free ZWD: King of an Empty City by Thomas Kroepfl Page A

poring over maps of the city. Topographic and road maps, photos of the city from what looked like a satellite, I guess that’s what people used before Google Maps. Now we’re back to these things again.
    She had a magic marker in her hand and was marking places on the map. Nearby was a notepad where she’d written Roosevelt and I-630. On the map she had a piece of paper stretched along Roosevelt covering everything south of it. It was the same for the north side of I-630.
    “What’cha doing, girl?”
    “Trying to come up with a reasonable territory.”
    She’d reckoned that we needed a boundary, a place to call our territory where we’d hunt, garden, and live. I liked the idea of it going from I-630 to Roosevelt; it would be fifteen blocks long or better. I suggested that the western border be Chester Street. It included Philander Smith College and some vacant lots. I don’t know why I thought we should include that place, but I felt it would be important later. She had no problem with that; it was the eastern boundaries she was concerned with. For her, the logical choice would be Main Street, but that would mean that we were going to be living outside of the territory she chose. Just on the other side of the street, but still outside. Scott Street, which ran right behind the Safeway where we were moving our base to, put that boundary to our backs. But it did run from Roosevelt to the interstate. No other street did east of us. So it was settled, we would claim everything between Roosevelt to the south and I-630 to the north, Scott to the east and Chester to the west. All lands within that area would be our territory, as declared by the swift outlining of a magic marker over the map we’d defined as our kingdom. I was king of an empty city. Now what?
                  Never having been a king before, I thought I should do my royal duty, so I went down to the first floor and gave the card catalogue one more crack. I could never figure those things out. I laughed at myself because I still did what I was taught in grade school and wrote down the location of the books on a scrap of paper with the little pencil that was provided and was never sharp. Why I didn’t just take the card with me I don’t know, but I put it back the way I’d done all the others these last few days and went in search of a book. Twenty minutes later I still couldn’t find it, but I kept pulling out other books that caught my interest.
                  You ever have one of those “aha” moments when you realize you were using the wrong word in the right context? I’d been looking for plant recognition. I pulled out a book as I browsed and saw a book called Edible Wild Plants Identification Guide . Recognition, Identification. The right word will take you in a whole new direction. Back at the card catalogue, I suddenly found all sorts of books on this subject. It’s good to be the king.
                  I spent the rest of the morning reading plant identification books. Most of them didn’t make a lot of sense to me, I think mainly because I had no reference point. So, I got a lot of stuff like this: “ The leaves of the potato plant are dark green in color. The oval-shaped leaves are compound, which means each leaf is comprised of multiple leaf-like parts.” Helps out a lot, don’t it, and no picture. But I read anyway. Who knows? Something might come in handy later.
                  I was sitting on the floor leaning against the front door reading my potato books. Thunder rumbled outside and mist hung thick in the air. My girl came down the stairs and stopped short, letting out a barely audible “no.” Behind me, outside past the atrium, stood six zombies—all of them staring down at me. There were eight or ten feet separating us, along with two sets of locked glass doors. I couldn’t believe I’d been that stupid. I’d gotten too comfortable here and let my guard down. She just sat