Yesterday afternoon Little Amanda Rose and I were making soap for holiday gifts when all of a sudden we heard a great commotion on the lawn outside. I was about to grab my go bag and my rifle, when we heard a great shout: “HELLO FRIENDS!!!”

It turns out that we had two living male visitors. Our lookout, Mr. Caputo almost shot the two men on sight; they were so bedraggled he could have sworn they were undead. Our Governor, Mr. K, quickly decided to talk to the men before shooting, for once (we’ve grown so soft these days).

And that is how we came to meet Mr. Young Sr. and Mr. Young Jr. This father and son duo has traveled all the way from West Virginia.  During the five year period since the great panic, they holed-up together with a dozen former miners in a coal mine. They had an electric generator, so they had some power, but rarely made it above ground other than to scavenge for food. That is, until Mr. Young Sr. developed black lung which makes it nearly impossible for him to breathe. They decided to find a new home somewhere with clean air.

Relatively sheltered from the horror of the present landscape, they were shocked by what they had seen on the road. While they were able to avoid “hooligans” by hiding in ditches, Mr. Young Sr. said they “ran into more ghouls then you can shake a stick at. Ugly bastards, if you’ll pardon my language ladies.”

According to the elder Mr. Young, “We haunted your property for two days before we dared introduce ourselves. But when we smelled your pies and saw your ‘Zombies Unwelcome’ mat, well we knew right then that we was in a civilized place at last.”

After this moving story, the ladies immediately gave the men some Thanksgiving leftovers.  Mr. K invited them to stay with us for a while on a trial basis.

Gentle readers, as you all know, I am one of two swinging single gals in this colony (and Miss Peterson is more of a swinger, if you catch my meaning). I’ve prayed and prayed for months now for an eligible bachelor. But there are simply no suitable men in our survival shelter that Miss Peterson hasn’t already molested. I had almost resigned myself to being a spinster forver, until I saw Mr. Young Jr!

Minor details such as his age, looks and disposition can perhaps be explored at a later date.  What is most important at present is that he is a man and therefore is worthy of my marital consideration.

For times like these I have developed the following three part husband vetting checklist. Sadly, so far, I have yet to find a man that satisfies all three requirements.

1. Is he capable of speech?

This is critical, because some zombies are so fresh you can barely tell they are undead, save for their telltale moaning. In order to ascertain his level of speech, I attempted to make small talk:

Miss E: Why hello Mr. Young! How are you today?
Mr. Young Jr: (Grunts, looks down at his feet.)
Miss E: So…um… well, I own a great deal of toilet paper . People around here even call me the “toilet paper heiress.” (Nervous laughter.) Isn’t that funny?
Mr. Young Jr:  (Looks up, suddenly interested) Funny? Not really. So can I have some? We’ve been using coal since our group ran out of toilet paper in the second week.

Conclusion: Mr. Young Jr. is not a zombie, merely sexily incommunicative. Also, most likely, very filthy.

2. Does he have scratches and/or bites?

This is tricky because it simply won’t do to ask a man to disrobe five minutes after meeting him so that you can inspect his body for telltale zed bites. In order to work around this, I snuck up to the cupola to secretly watch him bathe in the backyard in order to determine whether or not he was infected

Conclusion: He is 100% male…. and apparently bite free. Unfortunately, he was not lying about his creative use of coal.

 3. Is he a cannibal?

I offered him a bowl of my famous corn stew. He could have been telling the truth about his shaking hands, but it still made me nervous that his spoon initially found my arm, not the bowl!

Conclusion:  Jury is still out on this one. These days you can never quite tell whether or not a young man likes you for you, not just for your tender meat.

Oh dear, it looks like Miss Peterson is making her googly eyes again. Better go before she puts her grimy mitts on him!

Desperately yours,
Miss E