The ZWD Trilogy (Book 1): Zombie World Dominance [The Destruction Begins] (4 page)

Jennifer
was at Mike’s house. She jumped up from the couch with a huge smile. She
clenched her fists, pumping them up. She grabbed Mike, stood him up and hugged
him. She was screaming. Somehow she was able to still talk between her screams.
“Mary, are you kidding? I’d
love
to go! Just a minute, let me tell Mike
where we’re going.”

She
explained to Mike, “Mary and Jerry are going to New York for an end-of-summer
vacation and they want us to go. What do you think?”

Mike
was standing there trying to understand what had his girlfriend jumping around
screaming like a mad person. He wasn’t sure what was happening, but he was
going along with it, whatever it was. He had no plans to stay in East Norwich
alone. He smiled as he nodded yes.

“Mike
said yes, we’re going! We will be over there in a few. Thanks for thinking of
us!”

As
Jennifer was talking to Mary, Rosie clicked off from the conference call and
called Stan. She told him the news, and he readily agreed to go. She clicked
back into the conference call and told Mary, “I just talked to Stan. We’re both
coming. He’s on his way to my house and we’ll be over in 15 or 20 minutes.”

Mary
told her, “Rosie, I can’t get Cori on the phone. You live close to her house.
On your way over here, will you stop and see if she is home? If she is, see if
she wants to come with us. Bring her along if she does.”

“Sure,
I can do that. Stan will be at my house in ten minutes. We’ll look for Cori and
Teddy. We’ll see you in a few.”

Rosie
and Stan stopped at Cori’s house and found Teddy there. They told them about
the trip, and Cori and Teddy immediately agreed to go. They all went over to
Jerry’s house. Jerry’s parents’ front room was filled to capacity, with Jerry,
Mary, Jennifer, Mike, Rosie, Stan, Cori and Teddy were there. They sat on every
available spot they could find.

Mike, sitting
on the sofa with Rosie on his lap, was the first to speak. “So, Jerry… whose
idea was this vacation?”

Jerry
was sitting at the dining room table with his laptop open in front of him. “Well,
Mary and I had been talking. This is our last summer together. We thought it’d
be a good time for a last blast in the city. She and I are going to different
colleges after we graduate, and some of you are doing the same. This’ll really
be our last summer together for a few years while we are away at college. All
our parents are working the tourist thing. We thought that it’s high time that
we should have some fun of our own.

“Mom
gave me one of her credit cards in case I need something while they are gone.
Right now, I’m thinking that this is something I need. Mary wants to get two
rooms — one for us guys and one for the girls. If we get lucky, we can get one
with a connecting door between them. We want to leave early tomorrow. We can go
for ten days and still be back before our parents ever know we were gone. In
the city, we can do whatever we want. As long as none of us gets arrested or
anything, there won’t be any trouble.” He grinned.

“When
my mom finds out what I did, all she will do is holler at me. My brother
Freddy, did this just before his senior year three years ago. He went to the
city with some of his friends. They had a great time. He used mom’s credit card,
too. When she found out, she didn’t blow up at him — well, not too much, anyway.”

Mary
got up and went to sit next to Jennifer. Cori was sitting on the floor next to
Teddy. Jennifer looked around at everyone and said, “If I go, I know that my
parents will be good with it, as long as all of us are together. You
know
what they say: there’s safety in numbers. We really won’t have to tell them
that our boyfriends came with us, at least not until later and only if they
ask. Besides, we are almost adults.”

Mike
sat up straighter, with Jennifer still on his lap, and looked at Jerry. “Dude,
I’m broke. I can’t make this work with what I have on me. How are we all going
to be able to pay for this?”

Jerry
held up his mother’s credit card. “I’ll use mom’s credit card for all of us. I
want to go, Mary wants to go, the girls want to go. C’mon, Mike. The whole trip
depends on if the girls go. Mary won’t go without the girls, and I bet Jennifer
won’t go without you. What do you say? It’s all on me… well, it’s all on my
mom.”

Mary
stood up and looked around the room looking at her girlfriends. “Come on,
girls. Don’t you want to go? The eight of us can take over New York! We’ll have
a great time. We might not ever be able to do this again. I really want to go.
Come on, let’s do it.”

Rosie
was holding Stan’s hand, smiling at him.

“Okay,
Mary. If you, Jennifer and Cori are going, I’m going too. Stan will go wherever
I go, won’t you, sweetheart? It will be a girl’s weekend, except we’ll have our
guys with us. You’re right, Mary... After graduation. I’m going to Florida, and
Stan is going to Texas A&M. This is really the last time we’ll ever all be
together like this. Come on, Jen, Cori… it’ll be fun for all of us.”

Jennifer
was smiling as she snuggled with Mike while sitting on his lap. “All right,
Rosie, I’ll go. Mike, you’ll come with us, won’t you.” It wasn’t a question.

Once
Jennifer said this, she leaned over and kissed Mike, letting her long blonde
hair fall over both of their faces. Mike came up for air. He peeked around
Jennifer, looking at Jerry.

“Whoa…
Jerry, you know I’ll follow Jennifer wherever she goes. So yeah, we’ll go. I
just need you to remember I’m broke. I don’t want to come out of this owing
everyone on this trip, okay?”

Mary
walked over to the dining room table and sat next to Jerry. Looking at Cori,
she let out a long breath. “What about you two? Say you’ll come with us. It’ll
be fun!”

Cori
looked up. Her eyes seemed sunken into her face. She looked like she was
suffering from a bad case of the flu. She was holding on to Teddy tightly.
Teddy didn’t look too good, either. Neither of them had said a word the whole
time. Cori was coughing, but she looked at Mary and said in a hoarse voice, “We’ll
go with you guys. We both woke up feeling like crap. I think we’ve got some kind
of 24-hour bug, but we’ll go with you even if we feel bad. It shouldn’t last for
long. Thank you for asking us.”

Jerry
was on his laptop, looking for a place to stay. He found the place where his
brother had stayed three years before. He clicked on the website and liked what
they had to offer, so he called everyone to come and look at it.

“Hey
guys, come look at this. This is the same place my brother stayed a few years
ago. It doesn’t look too bad. I found two available rooms that connect.  There
are two beds in each room. We can get a rollaway for each room and there’ll be
plenty of space. If it sounds okay to you guys, I’ll reserve the rooms for us
now. I don’t want to lose them by waiting for too long. What do you think? If
you want me to reserve the rooms, I’ll need your IDs to book them.”

Everyone
huddled behind Jerry looking at the rooms. Jennifer didn’t see that he was
looking at two rooms. She told Jerry, “I don’t want to sleep in the same bed as
Mike. I want my own bed. We’re close, but I don’t think we want to be
that
close just yet. Not that something might not happen on this trip, but we’ll have
to wait and see if it does.”

Jerry
clicked through to the reservation page. He showed Jennifer that it was two
rooms with a connecting door. He looked at her. “Jennifer, that’s why we’re
getting two rooms, one for the girls and one for the boys. Will that work for
you?”

“Yeah,”
she said. “That’s a good idea. It’ll be nice to have two rooms.”

“Okay.
I’ll make the reservation starting tomorrow. Sunday through the next Wednesday.
Is that good for everyone?”

Jennifer
was counting the days on her fingers. She looked puzzled. She looked at Jerry. “If
we come back on Wednesday, that won’t be enough time. We have more than two
weeks until school starts. Can we stay until the Sunday before we start school?
That will give us all day Sunday to come home to get ready for school. Our
folks won’t be back until noon on the Monday that school starts. We won’t see
our parents until that night. What do you think?”

Jerry
smiled. He squeezed Mary’s hand. “All right, I’ll book it starting tomorrow for
two whole two weeks. That will give us a full two weeks in the city. Is everybody
good with that?”

Everyone
smiled as they gave Jerry a thumbs up. Jerry smiled and clicked the reserve
button, using his mother’s credit card to secure the rooms. He told everyone, “Okay,
I need everyone’s IDs to complete the reservation. I’ll need them to get our
travel tickets.”

Jerry
bought the bus and train tickets. He printed them out with their room
reservations and gave everyone back their cards.

“Everything
is ready. Be back here tomorrow at 7:00 AM with everything packed and ready to
go. Pack light, ‘cos we won’t need much. Bring what you need, but keep it to
one backpack each, okay? We’ll see all of you here tomorrow at seven, ready to
go. Don’t forget to keep your IDs and travel visas on you in case we get
stopped along the way. We will need them to get on the bus and train.”

And so
it was decided. The eight of them, four couples, would start their adventure the
next morning. They didn’t have any idea that the next day would the last time
that the eight of them would be together. It would also be the last time that
any of them would see East Norwich again.

After
everyone had left. Jerry hugged Mary. He asked her, “Did you notice Cori and
Teddy? They didn’t look so good.”

Mary
responded. “I know. Did you hear how hoarse Cori was? She said that they had a
24-hour bug. Now that I think about it, neither one of them said too much of
anything. They just sat on the floor over in the corner. When I looked at them,
their eyes looked all sunken into their heads. Teddy’s skin was turning dark. He
was rubbing his hands like they hurt. Kind of weird, don’t you think?”

“They
said they’ll be ready to go tomorrow, but I think if they don’t look any
better, they better stay home. I don’t want to catch anything and ruin our
trip. I don’t know, Jerry… maybe there’s something wrong with them. Neither of
them looked too good. Let’s see what happens tomorrow,” Mary said.

It was
seven in the morning the next day, a beautiful late summer Sunday morning. For
most teenagers around the world, their day didn’t begin until noon or later.
Seven in the morning was just too early. But this group of kids was on a
mission. Jerry was waiting for everyone on his parent’s front porch as everyone
trickled in. By 6:45 everyone was at Jerry’s house except for Teddy and Cori.
The girls were huddled up on the lawn, talking non-stop about the fun they were
going to have in the city. The guys were thinking about something entirely
different. They were sitting or standing on the porch, hoping that they might
just get lucky with their girls in the city.

Teenage
boys have two thoughts hardwired into their heads: food and sex. Ask any
teenage male, if they are honest with you, they’ll admit that’s what’s on their
minds. Once they get a driver’s license, it would be safe to say that there’s a
third item added to the list: cars.

Jerry
stood and spoke out loud to no one in particular. “Has anyone seen Teddy or
Cori?”

Stan
was leaning on the porch post. “I haven’t seen them. I live just down the
street from Teddy. Cori was staying with him because both of their parents are
at the beach. Rosie and I stopped at Teddy’s so we could walk together, but when
we got there, the front door was broken off the top hinge. It was standing wide
open. We walked a few feet into the house and called out to them, but there was
no answer. The house was a wreck. Everything was ripped off the walls, thrown
onto the floor. The furniture was ripped up. There were deep scratches or
gouges on the walls as well as the wooden floor. It was spooky standing there.
It was so quiet in the house. It was cold, too. Nobody answered us, so we left.
We got out of there as quick as we could. We were really hoping to find them so
they could tell us what happened.”

“Stan,
they never made it here and we haven’t heard from them since yesterday. They
didn't look so good then. Mary’s been calling Cori’s cell, but she’s not answering.”

Jerry
took a deep breath. He looked at everyone. They were all looking at him. With
his ROTC training, he knew how to take charge when necessary. When he was in
charge, everyone listened to what he had to say. This time was no different. He
sighed, leaned forward in his chair, cleared his throat and spat on the ground.