Ed Weiss, 45

Tollbooth Operator

When I met Marietta, she was the sweetest person you could ever imagine. She always had a smile on her face. She smiled so much that my friend, Chuck, thought she might be "simple." But she wasn't. She was just a naturally happy person. Yes, sometimes she got mad, like when she found aphids in her rose bushes or that one time I accidentally ran over her foot, but even then, she said adorable things like "Oh, crab cakes!" and "Holy shibblets!"

[Note: Not even Lucas knows what a "shibblet" is.]

How could I not fall in love with her? We got hitched and started a nice, quiet life together. I would do my Sudoko while she made dinner from recipes she found on the internet. Ham-based mostly, which was just another reason to love her. We would eat together and I'd tell her funny stories about my day at work: the cars with mufflers scraping on the ground and the people who thought they could trick me into taking Canadian money. We would laugh and laugh.

Then everything changed.

Her friend Sheila suggested that she watch The Walking Dead. It was a weird suggestion, because up until that point, Marietta mostly watched shows about people re-doing their back yards or selling coffee tables at swap meets. So a show where rotting corpses were being stabbed in the head didn't really seem like it was in her wheelhouse. If the zombies were scrapbooking or something, that would have at least made some sense.

But she was hooked. She watched them over and over. There reached a point where she knew that she was watching a show... but at the same time, she didn't know. She started talking about the characters as if they were real people, people she knew. People who talked to her.

Plus, she really fell behind on her housework. When I asked her about it, she told me that nobody was ever saved from the zombies by a freshly mopped floor.

I thought it was a phase. And I tried to help her by pointing out all the things in the show that didn't make any sense. You know, to remind her that it was fiction. But it just made her angry. She kept referring to me as "abusive." Calling me "Ed." Which is my name, but that's not the Ed she meant. She meant the Ed from the show. Abusive Ed.

And she said I was a drunk because I had a glass or two of Mike's Hard Lemonade every now and then. Believe me, if your wife started babbling about the Zombie Apocalypse you'd toss back a Mike's Hard Lemonade or two yourself.

Eventually, I decided I couldn't deal with it anymore, so I moved out. And that's when the neighbors started calling me.

"Marietta has a Samurai sword!"

"We're separated."

"Marietta is stabbing rotten fruit! And it's attracting flies!"

"We're separated."

"Marietta is trying to shoot our cats with a crossbow!"

"We're separated."

"Can't you make her see reason?"

"If I could make her see reason, we wouldn't be separated."

After weeks of this, I agreed to talk with Marietta, just to get the neighbors off my back. Also, I was hoping maybe she could do a load of laundry for me. I'd been hand-washing my skivvies in my motel room sink, but it wasn't the same.

I found her in the back yard, where she had set up some kind of weird obstacle course. There were tires, a climbing wall, a balance beam, a rope swing, all that stuff. And there were cardboard standees of characters from the show, and some cardboard zombies, and some random cardboard celebrities as well — Marilyn Monroe, Eeyore, New England Patriots tight end Rob Gronko, that guy from KISS with the long tongue, Walt, Jr. from Breaking Bad — all of which had been repeatedly mangled and stabbed.

Clearly, my wife had gone crazy.

"What the flapjack are you doing here?" she demanded when she saw me.

"The neighbors have been complaining."

"Yeah, well, those cotton-heads will be complaining a lot more when their innards are being torn out by the fraggle-daggle undead!"

"Come on, Mar. They're worried about you. I'm worried about you. Because I love you."

At that, she softened a little, but when she saw what I was carrying, she got mad.

"Cheese and crackers, Ed! Did you bring me your blangdang laundry?"

In hindsight, I can see where that was a tactical error. But in my defense, my tighty whities were turning gray.

And that's when she really let loose. I had never heard her use that kind of language before and I'm not going to repeat it here. But the gist was that I only loved her when she was this meek little weakling and now that she's a strong, confident, independent woman, I couldn't deal with her anymore.

"I'm not going to let you keep me down, Ed. I'm strong. Stronger than you think. Stronger than you. And one day, you'll see that." She emphasized her last point by shooting a crossbow at cardboard Gronk and missing by a mile. After a few seconds, we heard the distant sound of breaking glass. "I'm still practicing," she explained.

What could I do? I walked away, tossed my undies in the trash and bought some new ones (they were on sale at Marshalls) and hoped that some day, she'd come to her senses.

Then, of course, the Apocalypse came... but it had nothing to do with zombies. I could only imagine how foolish she felt. If she survived, that is.

After a few months, when it seemed safe to go outside, I went to check on her. When I got to the house, I saw no sign of her. In the back yard, the obstacle course was gone. There was just the sound of the wind in the leaves and the chattering of a squirrel.

I looked up and there was a gray squirrel in the tree. Aw, cute! I thought.

But then it turned and stared at me with a look of pure hate. Which was interesting, because I didn't know that squirrels could do that. Suddenly, more hate-filled squirrels appeared on the tree. The chattering got louder and louder.

Then the first squirrel leapt out of the tree towards me, with some high-pitched war shriek. Which was something else I didn't realize squirrels could do. I just stood there, frozen with fear.

Then, out of nowhere, a piece of sharpened metal — a crossbow bolt — streaked through the air, pierced the squirrel in the throat and pinned to the trunk of the tree.

For a moment, the squirrels were startled into silence.

I turned and I couldn't believe what I saw. It was Marietta! She had a repeating crossbow! I had no idea that such a thing even existed!

[Note: Lucas believed that Marietta was probably using a modified Cobra "Zombie Killer" Repeating Tactical Crossbow. He explained that the repeating crossbow was actually invented in ancient China, as early as 4th Century B.C. and he wouldn't shut up about it until I threatened to hit him with a shovel again.]

She racked another bolt.

"Run, Ed!"

I didn't run. In part, because we were dealing with squirrels, and my brain did not recognize squirrels as something you ran from, but mostly because my years of standing in the toll booth and eating ham (often at the same time) had gotten me completely out of shape.

In rapid succession she picked off a few more squirrels and then the rest of them fled.

"You did it! They're gone!" I said, relieved. "I know I doubted you, Marietta, but—"

Marietta held up a hand, silencing me, as her eyes scanned the tree line. "Oh, poopy," she said under her breath.

"What?"

"Those little lint lickers are flanking us."

She reached behind her neck and unsheathed the sword that was strapped to her back. It gleamed in the sunlight.

Suddenly, there was chattering from both directions and the squirrels attacked!

And this time, believe me, I ran.

Marietta leapt into action! She spun as she twirled her sword, shouting "Bring it on, you fluffer nutters!" Squirrel parts were flying everywhere! Two squirrels leapt on her back and started gnawing at her, but she shoulder-rolled, crushing them! Then she was back on her feet, and in a whirr of blurred steel, she decapitated two squirrels at the same time!

Keep in mind, this was the same woman who used to call me at work to come home and kill a spider for her!

In thirty seconds, it was all over. Marietta wasn't even breathing heavily, but I sure was after my twenty-yard dash. She was standing there, in a pile of squirrel parts, flicking the blood off of her blade and re-sheathing it.

"You OK?" she asked.

"Yeah," I said, bending over and grabbing my side, trying to catch my breath. "That was amazing. Thank you."

She shrugged, like it was no big deal, just business as usual.

"You know, Marietta..." She looked at me expectantly as I tried to come up with the exact right words. Because for the first time I realized that she had been right about me. I had only loved her for her weakness, when I should have loved her for her strength.

Maybe I was the crazy one. Crazy for letting this magnificent woman go.

"Yes, Ed?" she prodded.

I opened my mouth to speak. But then I noticed it. The necklace she was wearing. Made of squirrel heads.

My wife had a squirrel-head necklace.

"Um... never mind."