My movements are much less fluid after drawing back from my hit on the man. Fortunately for me, she is turning around to her left, presenting the back of her neck to my right handed swing.

While swinging the blade I hear my wife yell, “No,” from inside the store, and it causes me to flinch enough that I don’t give a straight swing. My angle changes so my blade gets stuck in her neck instead of cutting through. It’s lodged in her vertebrae, and judging by her downward motion, it did do enough damage to at least paralyze her legs, if nothing else. Whichever one of my kids is making Simone yell ‘no’ and distracting me during an infected cull is going to be in huge trouble when I get finished.

The infected lady hits the ground and is facing away from the store, with my machete sticking up from her neck. I start to step over her so I can put my right foot on her back to use the leverage to yank out my blade. That’s when I get hit.

I heard some more yelling from the store a split second before the impact, but even if I had the chance to glance up at my attacker, I’m stepping over a body, and wouldn’t have any balanced movement for escape or defense. I have been tackled by a large man. He’s probably 230 pounds, and of course, is athletic. He blindsided me from close to the same direction the two infected came, hitting me on my left side. He came from an angle north of the store, so he was out of the view of the store window until it was too late.

Even under normal circumstances, a standing attacker can cover 20 feet of distance and get to you before you can draw a weapon for defensive fire. There just wasn’t enough time for my family to adjust their aim to shoot the man, who was running at full speed, before he slammed into me.

This guy might be a drugger, maybe a schizophrenic. I can’t think of any other reason someone would run full hilt into me while I am killing two people who are obviously infected. The crazy people are never former fat slobs or cubicle dwellers. They always seem to be athletic, high school or college aged, and they suck. I mean I’m 45 years old, almost 46, and I have to wrestle with a psychotic idiot that is younger and easily 50 pounds heavier than me.

It's just dumb luck that my body position when I get hit causes my left arm to wedge at his neck under his chin. His impact into me dislodged my machete from the spine of my former ambush victim, but I can’t hold onto it when I hit the ground so it flies from my hand. I can barely breathe from the impact, with the ground, and from the weight of this guy on top of me.

He is already snapping his jaws, trying to bite at my face. “Wait what?” Looking at his expression, I can see that this is no psycho or druggie. This guy is infected. But it can’t be. This guy was moving fast! I mean running full speed when he hit me. At least that’s what it felt like. He hit me hard, and I don’t think the impact was just from his size.

I start reaching wildly with my right arm trying to grab my smaller blade kept by my leg, while he is snapping above me, and grabbing at my face with his hands. I pull my knife out, and I stab it up through the center of this infected’s mouth.