Charla Thorpe opened the door of Jesse and Walter’s house at 10 pm. Her hand was in her pocket.

The streets held only a few of the wormlike walking corpses. Some of them saw her and drifted up to the porch; others headed casually for the gate to the yard, so quietly sure of their right to be there that Charla saw red.

“Get ready to follow me,” she snapped.

Tomás, beside her, swallowed miserably. “You want me to video this?” he asked, thinking he knew what she was going to do.

“Naw, this’s just for us, baby,” she said and pulled out the gun. Tomás gasped.

The thin mustachioed man at the gun store had told her, “This revolver’s specially engineered to fire with less power than a regular handgun, not more. That’s what you want. The wooden bullet has to stay in the heart. If it blasts through and comes out the back, they keep coming with a hole right through them. Aim at chest level and sweep. As long as a bullet gets into the heart it’ll stay there and down they go.”

“Won’t they also stop coming if I shoot low with more firepower and blast their legs to buttcrust?” she’d asked.

The merchant had raised his eyebrows archly. “Oooooh, Lizbet Salander.” Charla glared at him. “I like the way you think,” he continued, “but I don’t know if it’s been tried. Go for my way. It’s been tried and found true.”

The revolver felt solid in her hand and smelled cleanly of metal and oil. Tomás quivered like a baby. “Charlie, what’re you going to do?”

“What do you think?!” She stepped out onto the porch and blasted away, sweeping with steel-hard hands as she’d been told.

The front row of vampires fell, clutching their hearts like in war movies. She swept the gun back and mowed down the next layer as she walked proudly down the steps and stood on the sidewalk.

The sudden silence when she stopped was electric. No vampires headed toward the haven of the back yard now. Ice cold, identical in every way, eyes red as an ancient wound, they gathered deeper and deeper around her.

“Now hear this,” she yelled, loud and strong. “I’m an American citizen and it’s my God-given right to walk the streets at night. My home is wherever I can kill enough of you motherfuckers, so get out of my way!”

Fierce triumph coursed through her for one more moment.

But the vampires came from blocks around, way more than she had bullets to kill. Already they were between her and the house. Ok. She had ample bullets to clear her way back. She turned back and shot. The line of vampires blocking her way fell like mowed grass.

On the porch Tomás clutched his hand to his heart, just like the comical vampires a moment ago.

In one beat of her fortressed heart, Charla’s world fell apart. She’d been half sure she wanted to divorce him and Jesus, she’d been such a fool with that little tramp that she’d nearly died of shame. But all that was swept aside as he slowly crumpled to the porch and slithered down the speckled granite steps.

The still-standing vampires turned instantly to where his body twitched.

“No, no, Jesus Christ NO!!!” she roared. She remembered the gun and brought it up but it was ripped away with a sizzle and a reek of burning flesh (so vampires had enough normal flesh to cook?). A harsh voice screamed and in that same instant a more distant voice cried “No, please don’t!” An echo of her own mind.

As she fell, she remembered the gleam of the candles, the lasagna Tomás had made for them the night this all began. She saw with remembered tenderness which must pierce her heart forevermore the love on his face as he called her into their private sanctum.

Now through the tilting melee of claws and fangs a great fountain of blood bloomed like a liquid flower from the throng of vampires on the porch and she let go of any reason to hang on and fight.