"I know! But if he didn't know there was something down here he wouldn't've given us anything, right?"

"I guess not. Maybe we can...buy better weapons for ourselves, at minimum, and fence off the areas we're working in, and then maybe try to figure out why there are zombies."

"That sounds good. What kind of weapons, I feel like guns are totally justified but I don't actually know how we would obtain guns."

"Are there gun stores? We could ask someone older to get us one, maybe?"

"...do we know anybody older who isn't a fairy or a ghost or a teacher? Or the caretaker, I guess, but he probably doesn't wanna illegally give us guns, or he probably would have done it before. Though maybe we can convince him now that we've been so responsible with the maces."

"My mom's not any of those things. And maybe seniors are old enough to buy guns? Dunno how old you have to be to buy guns."

"Proooobably eighteen? I dunno how terrible of an idea it is to ask either your mom or your brother for guns, I've never, like, talked to them."

"My mom would probably ask a lot of questions. Matt wouldn't."

"Are we gonna, like, owe Matt a bunch if we ask him for guns? Is there a way to shuffle it out of all the debt you have somehow?"

"I already owe him so probably I should be the one to ask him. So that you're not terrified and stuff."

"Okay. Thanks. I guess we're already breaking enough laws that we might as well use guns to defend ourselves against zombies. It's a lot better than dying, anyway."

"Laws are bad and there's no reason to follow them except to avoid getting sent to jail, is how I see it."

" - does that philosophy generalize as far as, like, whether we should obey stop signs?"

"- nah, that's different, that's less 'law' and more 'principle about how to make sure these enormous metal things don't collide and kill people'."

"I kinda think a bunch of laws are principles about how to keep various things from colliding and killing people. Some of them are dumber and worse at it than others, but like, I dunno how easy it is to tell which ones those are all the time."

"I guess. But the law doesn't know about zombies, anyway."

"Yeah. Or at least if it does I think my respect for the government's priorities probably goes way down."

"I'll ask Matt."

"Okay. Thanks. ...should we talk to the caretaker about it, or - I guess if we fire the things he'll hear, even if the cemetery's far enough away from everything else that nobody else will."

"I guess we probably should, yeah."

Sigh. "All right. I guess we can do it together."

The caretaker is an old man, maybe seventy, who walks with a cane and mostly sticks to the little cemetery office building in the evenings. At nine he's doing paperwork at his desk.

"Hi. The zombies are making us kinda nervous so we're gonna get guns."

He raises his eyebrows, a bit like you might expect someone to if you had maybe just told them that you found some dinosaur bones on their property. "Oh yes, I remember, you said you'd run into zombies. Haven't seen any in the upper levels in years. I suppose guns would take care of them. You'll be safe with them, no being silly and pointing them at each other?"

"I definitely don't plan to do anything stupid or risky."