The plethora of
ammunition and weapons that we have stockpiled has undoubtedly saved our lives.
I believe that members of our group could pass whatever sharpshooting PT test
that a private in the U.S. Army has to pass in order to graduate from boot
camp. And, believe me, those headshots are becoming pretty darn frequent when
we encounter a roaming zombie. However, there is a pretty significant drawback
to being so lethal with so many firearms.
We are starting to
amass a substantial collection of zombie bodies around the store and a zombie
body cooking on the asphalt during an August heat wave is not a good thing to
have. It can be pretty demoralizing just to see a parking lot littered with
bodies but the stench is enough to make your eyes water.
Now that the crew is
more comfortable with venturing outside and having the right ammo and weapons
to lay down cover fire, everyone has acknowledged that we have to find some way
to dispose of all these corpses that are racking up all around us.
Burying them is clearly
not an option. The amount of time that it would take would leave us too exposed
and vulnerable. I think burning them is a pretty viable option but, geez, how
do you go about burning a body? I don’t even want to Google search that thing. I mean I know bodies can be burned.
Obviously, cremation has been around since the Vikings and before. But it
doesn’t seem to me like bodies are flammable. I can see bodies burning as the
result of clothes catching on fire. Sure, bodies WILL burn when you put them in
a wooden ship and set the ship on fire. When they burned Brad Pitt’s body in
Troy, he was on a funeral pyre and his body burned up along with the pyre
itself.
But I don’t think you
can just toss a match on a naked pile of bodies and it will burst into flames.
I don’t want to waste our resources but, I suppose something like a bed of
charcoal, some smashed and broken up pallets, and some lighter fluid would do
the trick. Regardless, I am not looking forward to this.
One of those old
wives tales was that if you killed a snake, you were supposed to burn it in a
fire because a species cannot stand the smell of its own flesh burning. I don’t
know if this is true or not because steak or hamburgers on the grill is one of
the best smells in the world and I never remember the cows stampeding away from
the house when we would cook out.
Nevertheless, I do
not see our crew breaking out hot dogs and marshmallows to roast them over the
open flames. It cannot be a wonderful bouquet of aromas once we light that
match.
I will put this to
the group for a discussion. Maybe if we all put our heads together, we can
figure something out…
