The ZWD Trilogy (Book 1): Zombie World Dominance [The Destruction Begins] (31 page)

“Staying
in separate places at first works just fine with us, Jerry. We had a city gang
nearly kill us to get to the food we had. We had to fight to keep it. We
managed to get out of that without losing our stuff; fortunately for us, no one
from our group was killed. So yes, we
do
understand, Jerry. This zombie
crap has made thieves, killers, or both out of a lot of people. They seem to
rationalize that it’s the only way to survive.”

He
went on, “I guess I should let you in on what we have been doing. We knew you
were behind us for the last few days. We kept an eye on you while we were
walking. You guys didn’t do anything to be worried about, so we just kept
walking. We were waiting for you to show us what your intentions were. I’m glad
we were wrong about what we first thought about you. It’ll be good to walk with
some new friends that don’t have it out for us. We’ll stay on our side of the
street until you decide you’re ready for us. Thanks for taking the time to talk
to us rather than trying to kill us or steal from us. I’ll be going back to my
guys. Talk to you later.”

The
two shook hands before walking back to their respective sides of the street.
There wasn’t much that Jerry could add to what he had told the others. He did
tell them that they would be walking with them, just on the other side of the
street.

John walked
back over to his group and started to tell them what he knew about the others.

“Hey,
these guys are going to be okay, I think. They came to the city to have a
summer fling before their senior year in high school. They’re from East
Norwich. They are trying to get out of New York City, just like us. For a
while, they want to keep a little distance between us until they are
comfortable with us. They got robbed last week, so they’re still cautious. For
tonight, we’ll stay in two different places. Tomorrow we’ll walk head towards
home, keeping to separate sides of the street, at least at first. We’ll talk
more as the day goes on. What do you guys think about them?”

“The
good thing is that they are not from the city,” said Sid. “I like that. They’re
from East Norwich, so they probably aren’t all ganged up like the people from
the city. East Norwich is not big enough to have a gang problem. I’m okay with
walking together for a couple of days.”

“Thanks,
Sid. What about you, Peter? What do you think?”

“Neither
Alice nor I wanna go thru what we did before. We had to beat the hell out of
those guys just to be able to get away with our lives. I know that I feel
better about these people. I’m sure Alice does, too.”

“And
what about you, Sally?” asked John.

“You
know I’m good with whatever you decide. They sound like good kids. East Norwich
is a long way from New York City. It’s just so hard to tell about people in the
city. So many of them are just plain brutal. It seems like they’re all in a
gang or thugs. Why is it that all of the New Yorkers we’ve run into don’t want
to work for what they need? They’re more willing to take what they need from
others, even if they have to kill to get it. I’d sooner be with high school
kids from East Norwich any day before I trust any New Yorkers again. Yeah, I’m
good with this. They’re cautious, and that’s a good sign already.”

It was
noon. Both groups started to walk again, each on their side of the street. They
were in Garden City, Long Island on St. James Street. There were another three
or four days of walking ahead of them to get home.

During
the time that they had been running from the zombies, they had noticed that the
creatures didn’t seem to see very well. However, it appeared that they could
hear or sense the presence of people from a long way away.

Today
they had walked five or six miles when Mike noticed a group of zombies coming
out of a side street three blocks ahead. John’s group didn’t see them because
of the angle. Mike nudged Jerry, pointing to the zombies. Mike counted around
15 or 16 of the things.

The
zombies did not appear to have noticed either group yet. On Jerry’s side of the
street was an abandoned two-story building. He had Mike and the girls quickly
enter the store.

Jerry
tossed a small stone to get John’s attention. Without making a sound, Jerry
pointed to the zombies coming towards them, then to the open door behind him.
Jerry waved to them to cross the street to the store. One by one John’s group
came across and entered the building. Once inside, they blocked the door.

Jerry
led everyone up to the second floor. From there, they went up to the roof. To
stay out of sight, one person would rise up enough to look over the roof
railing to see where the zombies were. It was John’s turn to look. As he came
back from the rail, he gathered everyone around him and whispered, “Guys, the
zombies are moving up the street. They’re directly in front of this building. I
counted 30 to 35 of them, just staggering along. They aren’t looking around. If
we keep quiet, they should continue right past us.”

He
murmured, “I saw another group of seven or eight survivors a few blocks back up
the street. I think they’re drunk, because they’re standing in the street,
singing. If they don’t quiet down, the zombies will notice them. It’s really a
case of shut up or be killed.”

“John,
with a little luck, the zombies will pass us up for them,” said Alice. “If I
have to choose, I’d rather it be them that’s killed than us. I know it’s wrong
to think that way. But I don’t want to die.”

“No,
Alice,” said John. “You’re not wrong. Not now. The zombies will try to kill
anyone they can find. Personally, I’d rather it not be any of us
or
any
of them, but right now it’s their choice. If they don’t stay quiet, they’re
sealing their own fate. All we can focus on is making sure that we don’t do
anything stupid that could get us killed. We’ve gotta do what we have to save
ourselves first.”

About
25 minutes later, they could hear the drunks screaming as the zombies started
killing them. Mary, Alice, Sally, and Jennifer held their heads down and
started to cry. The guys couldn’t look at each other. They all knew what had
just happened. The fact that it could have been them didn’t make it any easier.

Mike
stood up and walked to the roof railing. John was already there, and Jerry
joined them. They were watching the zombies finish their job up the street.

Jerry
said, “John, I know what we agreed to a few hours ago, but I think this is a
good place to crash for tonight. Are you guys okay with that?”

“That
works for us, Jerry,” John replied. “We’ve never been in a situation like this
before. Not telling those other survivors was hard. We should have shouted to
warn them, but if we did that, we might have been attacked by the zombies too.
We’ve never had to make a decision like that before. I hope we never have to do
it again.”

“Yeah,
that was really hard on us too,” said Jerry. “And I agree, I hope we don’t have
to make that kind of choice again. I don’t believe that this zombie crap is
over yet, not by a long shot. If it doesn’t bother you, we’ll keeping our night
watch schedule that we’ve set up for ourselves.”

“It’s
not that we don’t trust you, but we have a night watch too,” John said. “Our
watchers can just keep each other company tonight.”

“We
have plenty of food,” said Sally. “Who’s hungry? We have enough for all of us
for several days.”

“Thanks,
Sally. The last time we ate before we ate tonight was almost two days ago. You
guys are good people. Not like everyone from the city.”

“It
probably needs to be warmed up, but with those zombies out there, it might be a
bad idea to try to build a fire in the darkness. Is that okay?”

“Warm
food or cold food, it’s still food. Thank you for being so generous.”

As
they ate, they got to know each other. They decided that each group would
continue to hold their own night watch. As a group, they would all sleep on the
second floor while those on night watch would stand their watch downstairs.

The
guys walked through the building. The front door was blocked closed. The back
door looked like it had not been opened for years. A few hours after the
zombies went by, the guys pried the back door open to look outside. It opened
onto a narrow alley, so narrow that two people couldn’t walk side by side. They
decided that was probably why the door hadn’t been opened for such a long
while. They would still watch it at night.

The
next day it was raining hard. Mike was the first one to mention it.

“Damn,
do you see how hard it’s raining? I don’t want to walk in the rain again. I’m
tired of being cold and wet. We really don’t have that far to go. Can we all
stay for another day until it stops raining?”

“Yeah,
I’m okay with that. I hate to walk in the rain too. When we get wet, we stay
cold all day long. If nobody else has a problem with one more day here, I’m
ready to stay.”

There
were mumbles of agreement.

“We’re
fine with that too. Staying here and staying dry is good.”

“All
right, then. We’ll move on tomorrow. Today we should post a day watch in case
something or someone finds us.”

“That’s
a good idea, John. Our watches can just stay on the night rotation for the day
watch.”

As the
day dragged into late afternoon, the day watch saw what they believed was the
same group of zombies from the day before lumber past their building at about
the same time as yesterday. This wasn’t the first time that they’d seen groups
of zombies at the same time. The creatures had a sort of schedule about them.

Throughout
the morning hours and into early afternoon, there were hardly any zombies out,
maybe one or two stragglers. The large groups of zombies came out in the late
afternoon. They also found that if they kept quiet, the zombies did not notice
them.

The
next day it was still raining. They decided to stay over yet another night.

It was
early afternoon. Mike was on watch with Alice. He was looking out the window at
the street in front of their building. There had been a bloodied, ripped-up
body on the street ever since they entered the building. Suddenly, Mike noticed
it starting to twitch. Then, slowly, it sat up. Mike began to yell for the
others.

Alice
was watching the street, sitting next to Mike, and when she realized the noise
he was making, she jumped up and grabbed him, putting her hand over his mouth.
Mike realized what he’d done, calmed down, and sent her to the second floor. He
wanted everyone to see this. Shortly after they all arrived at the night watch
post, the dead body suddenly stood and started to lumber down the street in the
same direction that the other zombies had gone earlier.

Watching
this was scary for everyone. Never in their lives could they have imagined that
the zombie outbreak could happen. Today, however, they had learned another
facet of the zombie outbreak.

Were
they witnessing where zombies came from? As they stood frozen in place, some
with their mouths hanging open, they were seeing something that not many
survivors would ever see. Would this be the ultimate fate of the people of the
world? Was this how it would all end? They didn’t know. They didn’t
want
to know. All they wanted to do was to get out of the building right now. They
wanted to be out of this
town
right now. The issue facing them was that
the rain had ended too late in the day for them to venture out. The zombies
would be making their daily rounds, hunting for people to kill. They could not
safely leave now.

They
agreed that the next day, rain or shine, they would leave this place. John’s
group of five had discussed it, and so had Jerry’s quartet. Everyone was
sitting around on the second floor, relaxing, except for those on the day
watch.

John
walked to the center of the group and stood next to Jerry.

“Do
you guys have a minute for me?” he said. “I’d like to talk to you about where
everyone will be going when we leave here. You know, Massapequa isn’t far from
here, maybe two days of walking. But we’ve been talking… There’s really nothing
in Massapequa for us. None of us have any family there. The five of us were all
teachers at the school district, and started to hang out as a group. All we
really had was our friendship. We all came from other cities on the east coast,
and moved to Massapequa for work. Last year was our first year of teaching, so
we really didn’t know anybody. And, well… we’ve become really comfortable with
your group. If you’ll let us, we’d like to come with you to East Norwich.”

Jerry
glanced at his friends. “John, I can’t speak for everyone, but I don’t have any
problem with that. Looking at my friends, I don’t see anyone that looks like
they have an issue with it either. We have to go home to see if any of our
families survived. So you’re welcome to come with us. We’ll leave tomorrow at
first light, as one group. We all want to be out of this building as fast as we
can.”

“Thank
you, Jerry. We will forever be grateful to all of you. Tomorrow will be a new
day for all of us.”