Oct 15, 2026 · 2 hr 15 min · 33 segments
From ancient folklore to modern cinematic masterpieces, tales of the walking dead have haunted human imagination for centuries, tapping into our deepest primal fears of mortality and the unknown. On…
My name is Lionel Gathers.
I'm thirty-two, and I guess I'm just a waiter.
On May second, the principals of the story and I came down through Frederick in my secondhand van.
And at some point around two o'clock, we passed a minor league baseball stadium.
On some instinct, I decided to cruise around it, and I saw that the center field wall had been partially removed, and the outer chain link fence that surrounded the stadium was wide open.
So I drove the van through the gap in the wall and right into the outfield, bump, bump, bump, and we parked it and got out.
The five of us were standing in the middle of this big empty stadium.
I tried to get a sense of the atmosphere and the silence.
I asked Athena to reach into the back of the van and very carefully bring out my weapons.
Only when I had my weapons in hand did I relax.
Now, when I say weapons, yes, it was the softball equipment my dear fiancée had bought me for Christmas.
She would later claim that my whole plan as soon as I saw the stadium was to shamelessly sucker everyone into playing and that my talk of a picnic was a pathetic smokescreen.
And she'd be kind of right, but how many chances do you get? A quick rundown of the athletic skills of the group.
Mouse's was seventy-one and a college professor, so he couldn't handle anything more strenuous than cribbage.
My fiancée, Athena, was an artist and so refused to play outright.
Ronnie was ex-military, actually still military, but AWOL for six months then.
So he had power and bat speed but could not handle my famous demon pitch.
And Melissa was, well, a seventeen-year-old girl into video games.
The fact that she hit my famous demon pitch back directly at my head should only be taken as an outlier situation and not a reflection of my athletic dominance, which is total.
We did get our picnic right there in the middle of the diamond, just some roast beef sandwiches and a lot of chocolate pudding and a six-pack of Pepsi.
And we all gave Melissa her birthday presents, such as they were.
That sunshine, that perfect weather made me just never want to leave that day.
It wouldn't have been ruined, I suppose, if Ronnie and I hadn't finished eating so early and run back to hit more balls at each other.
The second pitch Ronnie looked out on, he hit it to the right field corner and it bounced through another gap in the outfield fence into some area where it looked like they had stored away the groundskeeping equipment.
My name is Lionel Gathers.
I'm thirty-two, and I guess I'm just a waiter.
On May second, the principals of the story and I came down through Frederick in my secondhand van.
And at some point around two o'clock, we passed a minor league baseball stadium.
On some instinct, I decided to cruise around it, and I saw that the center field wall had been partially removed, and the outer chain link fence that surrounded the stadium was wide open.
So I drove the van through the gap in the wall and right into the outfield, bump, bump, bump, and we parked it and got out.
The five of us were standing in the middle of this big empty stadium.
I tried to get a sense of the atmosphere and the silence.
I asked Athena to reach into the back of the van and very carefully bring out my weapons.
Only when I had my weapons in hand did I relax.
Now, when I say weapons, yes, it was the softball equipment my dear fiancée had bought me for Christmas.
She would later claim that my whole plan as soon as I saw the stadium was to shamelessly sucker everyone into playing and that my talk of a picnic was a pathetic smokescreen.
And she'd be kind of right, but how many chances do you get? A quick rundown of the athletic skills of the group.
Mouse's was seventy-one and a college professor, so he couldn't handle anything more strenuous than cribbage.
My fiancée, Athena, was an artist and so refused to play outright.
Ronnie was ex-military, actually still military, but AWOL for six months then.
So he had power and bat speed but could not handle my famous demon pitch.
And Melissa was, well, a seventeen-year-old girl into video games.
The fact that she hit my famous demon pitch back directly at my head should only be taken as an outlier situation and not a reflection of my athletic dominance, which is total.
We did get our picnic right there in the middle of the diamond, just some roast beef sandwiches and a lot of chocolate pudding and a six-pack of Pepsi.
And we all gave Melissa her birthday presents, such as they were.
That sunshine, that perfect weather made me just never want to leave that day.
It wouldn't have been ruined, I suppose, if Ronnie and I hadn't finished eating so early and run back to hit more balls at each other.
The second pitch Ronnie looked out on, he hit it to the right field corner and it bounced through another gap in the outfield fence into some area where it looked like they had stored away the groundskeeping equipment.
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