The ZWD Trilogy (Book 1): Zombie World Dominance [The Destruction Begins] (32 page)

The
last person on night watch woke everyone at sunrise the next morning. After
breakfast, they headed out for East Norwich. For the next three days, they
walked during the day. They found a safe place for the night. At 11 AM on the
third day of walking, they arrived at the outskirts of East Norwich. Mike was
the first to turn onto Main Street. What he saw took his breath away.

Standing
in the middle of the street, he said, “Guys? Do you see this? This town is just
completely torn up. Look at the stores! All the windows that have been broken
out. Look over there on that side — the buildings are all burned. This was our
home.
Now it’s nothing but a beat-to-hell, tired old town. Mary, your home is the
closest. We can go see if there is anything there. Do you want to wait for us
here while we go look?”

“No,”
said Mary. “I don’t want to wait. We need to go somewhere… my house is just as
good as any other, I suppose.”

“Okay,
then. Mary’s house is down this street, and around the corner. Let’s go.”

A few
minutes later, they walked into Mary’s front yard.

“Mary,
I don’t see anything wrong with the place. We need to go inside and have a look
around. Wait out here on the sidewalk. A couple of us guys will go in to check
first.”

“Thank
you, Mike. I’ll wait out here. If my parents are here and alive, it’ll make me
so happy.”

Mike
and John went into the house. They looked around and found no one there. In the
kitchen, they found a letter on the table for Mary. Mike went to the door and called
for Jerry to bring Mary in.

“Okay,
Mary. Mike wants us to come in now,” said Jerry.

Mike
stopped them at the door and told them what they had found.

“There’s
no one in the house. Everything is still in good shape. I think your parents
left you a note.”

“Thank
you,” she said, her voice shaking. “Will you read it to me, please?”

“Sure.”
He cleared his throat. “‘Dear Mary, Your mother and I came back from the beach
early. The zombies were there, killing people. We got out just in time. We
stayed at the house for a couple of weeks until the electricity went out. The
water stopped running as well. I was on my radio and found a survivor camp in
Nebraska. I left the radio set to the station that the Nebraska Survivor Camp
is on, so you can talk to them. Your mother and I took the car and headed for
Nebraska. We left the pickup in the garage for you. The gas tank is full. There
is more gas in cans in the bed of the truck. When you read this, please go out
and start the generator and call the Nebraska Survivor Camp. We will tell their
radio man to expect your call. Love, Mother and Dad.’”

Mary
was in tears. She had to sit while Mike read the letter. “Jerry, please come
sit next to me,” she said. “I want you to hold me.”

“I’m
right here, Mary. Everything is gonna be fine. Your parents are alive; they
went to Nebraska. They’re waiting for you. We need to get the generator running
so we can call them.”

“Jerry,”
said Mary. “Before we get started with that, can we go talk somewhere?”

“Well…
sure. Let’s go upstairs. Come on.”

The
two went up the stairs to the second floor.

“What’s
going on?” said Jerry.

“Jerry,
you know that I love you. I want to marry you someday. Then this zombie crap
happened, and… Well, I’ve been so afraid to tell you this. I’ve been worried
that once I told you, you’d leave me.”

“Mary,
I love you too. I’d
never
leave you. What could you tell me that would
be so horrible? Why is it scaring you so much?”

“Jerry…
I’m pregnant. I knew the day before we left for New York. I’ve been so afraid
to tell you.”

“Oh,
Mary. That’s wonderful! I’m gonna be a dad! I’ll never leave you — I
love
you. C’mon, let’s go get the generator started. We need to talk to Nebraska,
and then we need to get on the road.”

On
their way down the stairs, they heard the sound of the generator running. John
and Mike had already started it up. But it was much too loud — it was going to
attract zombies. Jerry ran the rest of the way down the stairs to shut it off.
He had Mike and John help him carry it inside and up the stairs. In the spare
bedroom, it would be quieter.

As
soon as they rerouted the wiring for the generator, they started it up again.
Mary was the only one who knew how to work the radio, so she sat down at her
father’s desk. Her father had written down the call sign that he went by on the
radio: NO2EST.

“Calling
station NE0KCT, Nebraska Survivor Camp, this is NO2EST, East Norwich, New York.
Can you hear me, over?”

“East
Norwich this is Nebraska Survivor Camp. I can hear you loud and clear. How can
we help you, over?”

“I am
looking for my parents Matt and Mildred Johnson. My name is Mary Johnson. Have
you heard of them, over?”

“Yes,
East Norwich, they are here at Nebraska Survivor Camp. We just sent a runner to
bring them here to the radio. It should only take a few minutes. While we’re
waiting, let me give you directions to get here, over.”

“That’s
okay, Nebraska Survivor Camp. My father left me the directions, over.”

“Roger,
East Norwich. Here are your parents, over.”

“Mary
is that you? Are you okay? How is everyone else, over?”

“Hi,
Daddy…” She had to fight to hold back her tears. “I’m fine… most of us are
here. I do have some news for you and Mom. Uh… I’m pregnant. Jerry is the
father, and we want to get married.”

Afraid
of his response, she continued quickly, “We’ll start heading your way tomorrow.
Thank you for the truck, over.”

“Mary,
look in the garage, and there’ll be a hand-cranked electrical generator. If you
take that and the radio with you, we can talk when you stop at night. Here is
your mom. Over.”

“Hi,
Mom! How are you doing, over?”

“Mary,
I am doing great, even with all this zombie stuff going on. Please come out
here. It’s a safe place. There are high walls all the way around that are
patrolled 24 hours a day. The land that the Survivor Camp sits on is so big they
can grow food here. The camp leaders have told us that they have room for up to
3,000 people. There’s only about 375 of us here right now.” She paused, her
voice husky with emotion.

“Oh,
and your father wanted you to know that he left the directions to the Camp on
the desk. When you first get here, they’ll ask you to stay in quarantine for
two weeks to make sure that you don’t have the zombie virus. We did it, it is
not that bad. Over.”

“Thank
you, Mom. We’ll head that way in the morning. Mike is telling me we need to
shut down for now, ‘cause we don’t want to attract any zombies. I love you.
Bye, over and out.”

They
shut down the generator and got everything ready to spend the night in Mary’s
house. At first light, they would be heading towards North Platte, Nebraska.
The Nebraska Survivor Camp was 49 miles due north of North Platte, on State
Highway 83 at Stapleton, Nebraska.

It was
getting late in the afternoon. They had night watches set up. Since they had
joined groups, there was only one person on watch. This would give everyone a
chance to sleep a little longer. They had a light meal together before getting
ready to lay down for the night.

Around
4:00 PM, Mike was on watch. He was sitting in the living room, watching the
street. This was the time when the zombies normally came out. He didn’t expect
today to be any different. Then he saw something that made him jump up. He took
the stairs two at a time and called to everyone to look outside. As he pointed,
he whispered, “Guys, do you see what I see? Is that
Stan?
That zombie is
wearing the same ugly tee shirt that Stan had on at Jerry’s house the last time
we saw him. Oh,
hell
no. Is that
Rosie?
That’s her sweater, or
what’s left of it, anyway. Aw, jeez… now we know why they didn’t come with us.”

“Oh,
no.
Damn it!” said Jerry. It
was
them. “What do we do now?”

“Jerry,
I don’t know who these people are, but I would strongly advise you to just
ignore them. Let them walk on past this house. There are about 40 of them out
there. If we go outside, we’ll die. We need to go back upstairs and be as quiet
as we can until they’re gone.”

“Okay,
John. You’re right,” said Jerry. “I hate to say it, but I’m good with that. If
we go out there, there’s no guarantee that they’ll know who we are. I don’t
want to be killed by a zombie, but I especially don’t want to be killed by a
zombie that knows us.”

“Is
this what is going to happen to all of us, Jerry?” said Mary.

“I
really don’t know
what’s
going to happen,” said Jerry. “Two or three
months ago I didn’t know that we’d be running from zombies now. We just need to
try to live one day at a time.”

The
next morning at sunrise, they left East Norwich, headed to Nebraska. They drove
until mid-afternoon and started looking for a safe place to stop for the night.
They found a vacant house with a small barn on the outskirts of Morristown,
Ohio.

They
parked the pickup in the barn, securing the doors against zombies. Earlier in
the day, they had passed a road gang of thugs. To keep from being found, they
did not light any candles or heat food. They would eat cold food again. The
night watch kept an eye out for the road gang as well as the zombies. They
could not let down their guard. As they settled down for the day, Jerry asked
Mary a question.

“Mary,
I’ve been thinking… once we get to the Nebraska Survivor Camp, I want to marry
you. We could ask your parents to be there. I wanna be your husband, and we’ll
be a family. What do you say, Mary?”

Mary
smiled at him. “Jerry, that’s the best thing that you have said to me, ever. My
answer is yes, I’ll marry you. I’ve always wanted to have my parents at my
wedding. Maybe with our baby, this zombie thing that we’ve been fighting will
be just a little better for all of us.”

Tomorrow
they would run.

They
now had two reasons to do more than survive.

The
first reason is that a new baby would be born into this new world.

The
second is that they had a destination: Nebraska.

Their
lives depended on getting to Nebraska.

They
needed to run still further to survive.

Riverside, California

ADZ +197d

When
the countries adopted the isolationist stance, they planned to control their
citizens by restricting movement from one area of the world to another by using
the new travel visas. News reporters, for the most part, were granted the
ability to move around select areas of their home country. By allowing
reporters a larger area of travel, the countries would be able to monitor
citizens through the news that was being reported. For example, News reporters
stationed on the west coast of America had permanently stamped travel documents
that allowed them to travel from the Mexican border to the Canadian border and
from the Pacific Ocean to the Rocky Mountains.

As
long as the broadcast van that Kimberly was assigned to was within the
acceptable boundaries, they would not bring unwanted attention to themselves
for being too far away from Riverside.

As
morning dawned, Kimberly rubbed the sleep from her eyes. She could smell
breakfast being made and turned her head to see Floyd busy cooking on the
camping stove that he’d bought while they were filling up the van’s gas tanks.
He had been able to find pancake mix as well as a package of bacon. She walked
over to where he was cooking.

He said,
“Good morning, sunshine. How about a cup of coffee? If we can’t buy any more,
this’ll be the last it. You’re not a morning person, are you?”

“Thanks
for the coffee, Floyd. No, I’m really not a morning person at all. You ought to
know that by now. We’ve been at this gas station for more than seven days. How
are our supplies holding out?”

“You’re
welcome. What you have in your hand is the last of the coffee. It was all I
could buy. It’s the same for the pancake mix as well as the bacon. After today,
we’ll be on canned or dried food. That market where I stopped was out of almost
everything. The clerk told me that they weren’t getting their deliveries any
more. I bought everything that I could. The store was packed with people,
buying everything on the shelves. So what are your plans for today, Kimberly?”

“I
want to talk to everyone as a group after we’ve had our breakfast. That coffee
was good. Do you have enough that I might have a second cup?”

“I do.
If you want another cup, go ahead and pour yourself one. Can you make sure that
the guys are awake, please? Breakfast is almost ready.”

“Yeah,
I will. You can dish up breakfast for everyone, and I’ll make sure that they’re
all awake.”

With
coffee in hand, she went out to the service bays in the gas station to wake
everyone. She was happy to find everyone was already up. They were starting to come
into the office for breakfast.

As
Floyd was dishing up their plates, the rest of them sat down at their makeshift
table. All of them ate in silence. None of them talked, but not because they
didn’t have anything to say. They didn’t talk because they were hungry. They
had been on rations since they had left Riverside. They were always hungry.
After they had finished eating, they put their paper plates into the garbage
can.

Nursing
her last cup of coffee, Kimberly asked them to stay in the office for a minute
because she had something to talk to them about. She was concerned about their
current state of affairs.

The
professional reporter that she was, she could not talk to anyone without
standing. Holding her lukewarm coffee, she rose to her feet. She stood at the
end of the makeshift table so she could see everyone.

She
started by saying, “I’m getting tired of staying in Llano. We’ve been here for
the last seven days. Talking with Floyd this morning, he told me that as of
today we are nearly out of fresh food. We are down to canned or dried food from
here on out. In my opinion, we’re wasting our time by staying here. The zombie
thing has gotten worse rather than better. I don’t know about you, but this gas
station isn’t where I want to hole up until this zombie outbreak has been
cured.”

“I’ve
tried to call the station a number of times. No one has answered. I tried to
call other places in Riverside, but it’s the same thing, no answer. I have been
listening to the radio in the van. This is what I understand from the news that
I’ve hearing. They say that the electrical grid is starting to fail in various parts
of the Los Angeles Basin. With it, everything else is failing. They’re losing
water, sewer, natural gas, phone service, public transportation, deliveries of
food and anything else that has to be delivered. This is just a partial list.
The police aren’t responding to calls, fire departments aren’t fighting fires… the
list goes on.”

“We can’t
stay in or even near the Los Angeles Basin. As the number of zombies increases,
the people in the basin are moving towards Nevada or Arizona. Our van has been
refueled. It’s ready to go when we’re ready. Llano is becoming a place where we
don’t want to be. Many of the news stations that I listened to earlier have
gone off the air. The stations that are still on are closer to our part of the
state. A station in Palmdale has been reporting that the zombies are starting
to take over that city. They’ve been telling everyone to get away from any of
the larger population centers. What they are finding is the larger the
population in an area, the more zombies are drawn there. The Palmdale station
went off the air yesterday. I can’t find another station on the radio. No one’s
transmitting now.”

“We
need to get out of here before we can’t leave. We can’t go much further south
before we run into the Mexican border. We don’t want to cross into Mexico; the drug
cartels have created a unified organization and crushed the Mexican military as
well as what’s left of their government. They are now in control of Mexico. If
we go east, there are fewer people, but we’ll be driving into cold weather with
the late fall or early winter coming. I don’t know about you, but I don’t do
well in snow up to my ass. If we go north, there are fewer people up there than
here, other than in the Portland or the greater Seattle area around Puget
Sound. The areas with larger military bases appear to be hit by the outbreak
harder than other areas.”

“I
used to work in Portland. If we can get to Oregon on I-5, we could stop
anywhere from Eugene to Salem. If we can get there quickly enough, there ought
to be a place that would be good for us to lay over during the winter, and then
in the spring, we can decide what we want to do.”

“I
have a theory about the zombies. Mind you, it’s only a theory; I don’t have
anything to back it up, but I believe that it’s some kind of attack on our country.
Whoever’s behind this might be trying to take over the other countries by using
zombies to do their dirty work. The start of the outbreak was too well
coordinated to be a natural disaster. If it were a real outbreak, you’d think it
would have started in one place. Over time, it would have spread to the other
countries. But this damn thing happened all at once, all over the world, within
24 hours. I don’t know why, but this is how I feel about it. But what do I
know, I’m just a reporter. I don’t know what started this zombie crap. It could
be some kind of chemical warfare, or something else. Whatever it is, it’s destroying
the world as we know it.”

“Wow,
Kimberly. I have never looked at this like that,” said Jason. “If you’re right,
it just turned from a scary natural disaster to a strategic attack that we probably
won’t survive. In five minutes, you turned it into one of the most terrifying
manmade disasters of all time.”

“Jason,
I’ve been racking my brain as to how this outbreak could have started
everywhere at the same time. It doesn’t make any sense to me otherwise. There’s
got to be some kind of motive behind this. There has to be. It’s too controlled
for it to be anything else.”

“I
don’t know,” said Thomas. “Whoever is behind this had to have known that they’d
be killing everyone in the world. If that was their plan, what’s going to be
left for them when it’s all over?”

“I
don’t know what will be left,” said Kimberly. “If this is manmade, then it must
have gotten out of control. So far it’s just a thought, and I hope I’m wrong.
Let’s get everything ready to leave in the morning. If nobody has any
objections, I want to go to Oregon. We need to get everything ready to leave
first thing in the morning. With the electrical grid going down, we might not
be able to get any gas for the van. Find something in this gas station that we
can use to siphon gas out of abandoned cars that we see. If there are any gas
cans, take them too. And let’s strip all the broadcast equipment out of the van
to make it lighter. It should use less gas that way.”

The
rest of the day they stripped the van of anything they didn’t need. In the
morning, they would drive through Palmdale to Bakersfield, then up toward
Oregon on Interstate 5. With the gas that they had, they would able to drive as
far as Red Bluff, California; if they couldn’t get any more gas, they would be walking
from that point on.

After
seven months of travel, the power grid on the west coast of America had failed
completely. Kimberly and her crew had ended up walking from Red Bluff to
Ashland, Oregon. On their journey, Tony had been killed by the zombies in
California, and Jason was killed as they entered Oregon. It was only the three that
remained now, Kimberly, Floyd and Eddie.

In
Ashland, they were staying in a vacant store that they were able to make secure.
They had been there for the last two days. They were out of food. They were searching
for food and clothing to keep themselves warm.

“Kimberly,
we ate the last of our food yesterday,” said Floyd. “If we don’t find more, we’re
done. Summer is over, and fall is here. In Oregon, I guess fall means that the
rain falls on us. I’m cold, wet and hungry, and all I want to do is sit inside
next to a warm fire, eating a steak and drinking a beer, and frankly, Eddie is
starting to look good enough to eat.” They all laughed together grimly. “Just
kidding, Eddie, sorry. But we might want to think about making plans to stay in
one place for the winter. Walking any further in this rain, or worse yet, snow,
is gonna take a toll on us. Of course, we can’t forget about the zombies. They’ve
been out in larger hunting groups. That last swarm we saw yesterday afternoon
had to have been as many as 30 or 35 in one group. They’re coming out in the late
afternoon through the night and they’re growing larger. I guess the good thing
is that they don’t come out in the large swarms until late afternoon. When the
sun comes up, it seems like they’re gone. During the day, we still see ‘em, but
there’s only one or two, or maybe three at a time.”

“Floyd,
I’m worried about it too,” said Kim. “You’re right, we need to find more food,
and I agree that we need to find a place for the winter before we get caught
with nowhere to go. We’ll have better luck once we get out of this part of
Oregon. After we get up to the Willamette Valley around Eugene or even Salem, I
know there’ll be more food for us up there. They grow a lot of crops up there.
I think we just need to suck it up until we get there. I’ve driven this road
many times, and it’s only about 180 miles to Eugene.”

She
went on, “We need to start moving at sunup. We need to keep pushing on until we
get there, following the I-5. Hopefully find a running car or truck for us to
use.”

“Kimberly,
there’s only three of us now,” said Floyd. “We might want to think about taking
people up on their offer to join groups when we’re asked. I know not everyone
has the same destination that we do. Does that make it right or wrong? The only
thing we know for sure is that the number of zombies keeps growing every day.
Who knows, maybe they won’t survive the winter. You don’t see snakes or bears
in the winter, maybe the zombies are more like them than like us.”

“Kim,
come over here and look at this,” said Eddie. “What the hell is it? It’s like a
puddle of dark, gooey, oozy crap. It smells like an open sewer… or a zombie! Come
on, take a closer look. Do you see, it’s got bones and scraps of clothing in
it? What was this? Are the zombies killing people in a different way now, or is
this maybe what happens when a zombie dies?”

“I
don’t know what it is, Eddie, but right now I think we need to get from this as
we can. I don’t know if it’s dangerous or what, but I want to get away from it,
now.” She began to load up the things she had been carrying. “Come on, let’s
get going.”

After
they had been walking another hour or so, Kimberly said, “On another subject,
I’m tired of losing friends. I can take nearly anything that’s thrown at me,
but I can’t handle the idea of losing either of you. I agree that our ideas may
not be the right ones. I agree that if we can join another group that it might
be good for us, but before we join any group we need to make sure that they have
similar thoughts to us. I don’t want to join a gang. Right now let’s find a
place to hole up and get some rest.”

The
two men nodded agreement.

“At
first light, we need to head out. I want to be in Grants Pass by the time we
stop for the day. I have been holding a little food in case we ran out. We eat
it for breakfast. After that, we’ll be out of food. If we’re lucky, we might
find more food on the way to Grants Pass. Good night everyone. Tomorrow I hope
it does not rain on us. At least very hard anyway. Maybe we can make raincoats
out of some of the plastic that is lying around to help keep us dry.”