D. Walker - The Snacking Dead

4 Assemble the wraps: Lay the wraps out on a work surface. Top each wrap with some of the butter lettuce leaves, the tomatoes, and fried chicken. Drizzle each with 2 tablespoons of the dressing. Fold in the short sides of each wrap and roll up like a burrito, enclosing the fried chicken inside. Serve.

“Wrapping” is a kitchen skill that transfers well to fighting the undead. Rolled in a rug, sheet, or flexible fencing, your assailant will be unable to move, leaving you free to brain it on your own schedule.

A man could keep going on squirrel sushi only so long.Daryl was nearing the limit.

He had finally reached the banks of the Flint. He could either swim it or go south to cross at the bridge, but it was getting late and he had to plan for breakfast.

He took a few feet of poultry netting he’d saved from the farm and stitched it into the shape of a pillow with some twine. He left narrow open funnels at each corner. He placed the last of the squirrel guts inside, and sank the thing at a slight angle into the shallows by the river. He wrapped himself in his poncho and hoped for the best.

There was an audible sloshing sound long before he saw them in the predawn darkness. Three shambling shadows making slow progress along the shallows. They were about to stomp all over his trap.

He sighed and got out his hatchet to defend his breakfast. He wheeled around the tree and chopped the lead walker. Too late he realized his mistake. There were at least a dozen walkers behind the first three, one right after the other like a chow line.

He swung the hatchet in a wide arc to win himself a little space. He caught one of them in the head, but the hatchet stuck hard into a tree trunk he hadn’t seen properly.

In the darkness one of the biters got the drop on him, pushing him forward. The hatchet pulled loose from the tree as he fell and its blade caught the meat of his calf. He bellowed angrily as he rose back out of the water and rained the hatchet down on the remaining biters until nothing moved. He dragged himself back to his camp to rest.

The sun rose an hour later and he limped back to pull his trap. It was filled up with a plate’s worth of red, brownish, and pink crawfish. There was even a blue one.

He figured he probably got twice as many because of his blood in the water. A mudbug will eat anything, and anything will eat him.

Well, almost anything. Even a crawfish won’t eat walker meat, and the walkers weren’t after his crawfish.

They’d never know what they were missing.

serves 4

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

1 medium onion, chopped

½ cup chopped celery

½ cup chopped green bell pepper

1 garlic clove, finely chopped

2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

2 cups low-sodium chicken broth

1 tablespoon tomato paste

1 teaspoon Cajun seasoning

2 bay leaves

½ teaspoon hot sauce, or to taste

1 pound peeled crawfish tails, thawed if frozen (or substitute small peeled shrimp)

Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Toast, for serving

¼ cup chopped scallion, for garnish

1 In a large saucepan, heat the oil and butter over medium heat. Add the onion, celery, and bell pepper and cook, stirring occasionally, until very soft, about 10 minutes. Add the garlic and cook for 30 seconds. Add the flour and cook, stirring constantly, for 1 minute. Add the broth, tomato paste, Cajun seasoning, bay leaves, and hot sauce and cook, stirring, until slightly thickened, about 5 minutes. Add the crawfish or shrimp and simmer gently, uncovered, for 10 minutes. Season the étouffée with salt and pepper to taste. Remove and discard the bay leaves.

2 Serve the étouffée spooned onto hot toasts and garnished with the scallion.

If you can’t scavenge bread, this is just as tasty over rice—nature’s perfect bunker food.

H e limped alongside Wildcat Creek away from the river.He reached a road and saw a handmade sign: “Grumpy’s BBQ.”

Just next to the bridge was a cramped old rib shack with a corrugated tin roof. Inside were the remains of maybe five diners around a picnic table. The shriveled jerky that remained of their meals lay untouched on yellowed paper plates.

“Guess they weren’t the only ones who showed up for ribs,” he said to himself.

A high buzzing sound issued from the back room. He spotted a jagged hole in the wall, bees passing in and out of it.

Finally, he could do something about the nasty gash in his leg.

He tied a bandanna around his face. His reflection in the mirrored beer sign looked like a bank robber. He gathered his poncho tightly around him and draped his head with a screen cut from the window.

He sliced the tops off some beer cans, then filled them with twigs and lit them. When the room had filled with smoke, he set to work.

He cut out a large section of the wall around the hole with his hatchet. From the exposed joist hung an enormous sheet of honeycomb, filling the space between the old wood studs.

The bees buzzed around threateningly despite the smoke. He knew they could sense fear, so he kept his cool.

He picked up one of the smoking cans and held it under the comb. Bees calmed and dropped harmlessly out of it. He heated his knife on the hot twigs and carefully sliced a section of the comb free with the warmed blade.

Then he ran back to the creek, clutching the comb and coughing his lungs inside out. He mashed the comb over the screen with the knife hilt, filling an empty sauce jar from the BBQ place with the pale honey.

He slathered the livid cut in his leg with the antiseptic honey and breathed a little easier.

There was plenty left over to cook up some lunch. But first he had a couple dozen stingers to scrape out of his arms.

makes 6 to 8 servings

CORNBREAD

1 cup yellow cornmeal

⅔ cup all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon baking powder

1¼ teaspoons salt

1 cup sour cream

½ cup whole milk

⅓ cup honey

2 large eggs

¼ teaspoon baking soda

8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter

⅓ cup corn kernels, thawed if frozen (optional)

HONEY BUTTER

½ cup (1 stick) softened butter

1 to 2 tablespoons honey, to taste

Few drops fresh lemon juice, to taste

1 Preheat the oven to 375°F.