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The old man shuffled about the garden as he tended to his plants. The spiral herb garden, the raised stone keyhole garden that was filled with various vegetables, the berry bushes and the fruit trees, all the things he needed to endure life, and the large patch of flowers in the corner, the purple hyacinths and golden-yellow marigolds, for grief and pain; the cream and pink magnolias, for perseverance; the lilac crocuses, for hope, and for friendship against adversity; and the bright butter-yellow daffodils for new beginnings; all the things he needed to endure death.
There would be no more bodies to bury under the flowers. He was the last of their group, and it had been many long years since he had seen another human wandering around out here, out at the edge of nowhere. There would be no-one to bury him, when he died.
A noise at the gate made him look up, but it was just another zombie. He sighed, and turned back to his gardening, inspecting his leafy greens for anything ripe enough to harvest. A few years back, in his younger days he would have gone and dealt with that. Stabbed its head through the gate with a gardening tool, if only to rid himself of the noise of it. When there were others here, they would have gone out and burned its body, too, to be rid of the smell of its corpse hanging around. But all that was over now. He was the only one left, and he had no strength to keep his surroundings free of the dead anymore. It was all he could do to keep his garden alive in the middle of it.
The groans outside the gate intensified. Something was getting the zombie all worked up, but he didn't even bother to look. It had probably just spotted one of his chickens near the gate. It happened sometimes, but one of the young men who used to be here had fashioned a little cage of chicken wire at the bottom of the gate to keep the birds from getting close to it. The zombies could get worked up all they liked, they weren't getting any of his chickens. And he had food to harvest if he wanted to eat today.
Then more groans, further off and overlapping, as if there were a whole crowd of the things coming his way. Branches snapping. Footsteps. Grunting and more groans. And then a voice. A clear, human voice.
"Help! Let us in!"
He looked up. The owner of the voice was a woman, carrying a child in one arm and wielding a machete with the other. A second child hid behind her legs, a small knife clutched in its fist, the blade already red with blood. The woman's skin was brown like his, the older child's black and the younger's white. They could both still be her own but he knew what was more likely, in this world that tore families apart and threw new ones together. Both of the children were young enough that they must have been born after this whole thing started, and he marvelled at the courage and strength and sheer luck that must have taken. For them to survive this long, for them to have stumbled upon this place out here, possibly the one place left that could keep them safe and fed and alive.
"Please! You have to let us in!"
That snapped him to attention and made him realise he'd just been standing there staring. The old man dropped his little basket of fruit and veg and ran for the gate, grabbing a pitchfork that was leaned up against it before opening it.
The woman and her children slipped inside the compound behind him while he impaled the nearest thing's head on the end of his pitchfork. The sickening feeling of dried flesh and bone giving under the tool brought back a lot of bad memories. He'd not had to do this in a long while. He'd hoped to never have to do it again.
More of them came pouring out of the trees while he was still prying his pitchfork out from the zombie's face. He managed to stumble back through the gate but not before one of them sunk its teeth into his shoulder. His worst nightmare. Usually he had thick leather armour to wear if he absolutely had to go outside but there hadn't been time. He hadn't been expecting this today. He hadn't been expecting this ever. He'd thought he was going to die alone here. Maybe that had been the worse nightmare, actually.
"Oh my God! I'm so sorry!" The woman's face crumpled into tears as she took in the damage.
He smiled back at her. "It's okay, really. At least there'll be someone to take care of this place when I'm gone. Let me show you how everything works here, while there's still time. And when I'm gone, maybe you could bury me under the flowers with my family."