Z Day is Here (7 page)

The rest of the night, we all sat in silence.
Well, it would have been silent had it not been for the constant
moaning of the undead directly outside the house. Is it the hunger
that makes them moan or some kind of biological release of air
through the lungs? Either way, it is beginning to annoy me again. I
mean we are trapped here, unable to go anywhere, and all they can
do is moan. I think it is having an impact on everyone now. We are
all on edge. Arguments spring up almost every hour. We are arguing
over stupid things like who turned on the light or who didn't flush
the toilet.

Spook is becoming very restless. He has been
pacing back and forth across the hallway for the past three hours.
I am getting sick of looking at all these fake zombies and
monsters. I wish I could have found somewhere else to stay. Why
couldn't a nice old lady have found us? Instead, I am stuck with
this lunatic. I am stuck with all the lunatics. I can't breathe. I
feel claustrophobic. Why won’t that moaning go away??

Ken is screaming at Cole and Brett in the
other room, something about touching his fog machine. Tonya is just
sitting in the corner rocking back and forth. Paula is humming some
old song. Why won’t she shut the hell up??? The moaning is bad
enough.

This place is turning into a ticking time
bomb. I am afraid something really bad is going to happen very
soon.

One month! This shit has been going on for
one month! One month ago today, I woke up, kissed Darcy goodbye,
and headed to work. Sure, I knew about all the strange stuff going
on around the world, but hey, isn't there always stuff going on?
Honestly, I never really watched the news, and on my way to work
that day, I was listening to my iPod. It wasn't until I got to work
that I heard about everything going on in the city. Now that I
think back, I do remember seeing quite a few people walking down
the road. I also remember seeing a lot of police cars and
ambulances that morning, but in the city, I saw that all the time.
I should have stayed home. Had I stayed home, I wouldn't be sitting
in this hellhole of a house.

Spook won’t shut up about the lack of food
and has now started yelling at Paula on a regular basis. Ken and
Cole have to stay in different rooms to keep from killing each
other, and Brett has been hitting on Tonya all morning. I just keep
looking out the window through a couple of boards fastened to the
inside. It allows me just enough room to see the front of the
house. The moaning is getting worse with each passing minute. It is
driving us all insane. Tonya tried calming everyone down today by
telling jokes, but no one seemed to care. It was not a time to
laugh. She told some joke about two guys walking into a bar, but I
forget the punch line. Must not have been too funny.

Spook is right to worry about food. We are
running out! We have enough to last maybe one more day if we don't
eat much. Two teenagers can clean out a house full of food within
hours, and we have been here for days. If we don't leave here soon,
we will not have to worry about the zombies. We will die of
hunger.

I think tonight I will get on the roof and
try to take out more of those bastards. I have to do something. If
nothing else, it will stop a few more from moaning. Please let that
moaning stop! I can hear Brett screaming at them to shut up from
another room. I have to go calm him down...if I can calm myself
down.

We are out of food. Someone broke into the
pantry last night and ate it all! I think it was Brett or Cole.
They are two teenage boys who could eat an elephant. Spook is
pissed, just as we all are. What are we going to do for food now?
This is all we need. We are all going a little insane, and now
someone ate all the food. The constant moaning outside is still
there, mocking us, taunting us, begging us to come outside and look
for food. Those bastards. I will come out with a rocket to shove up
their asses!

I am feeling so claustrophobic in here. Even
when I get on the roof, I feel locked in. For every ten zombies we
kill, twenty more pop up. I have no doubt they will break through
our barricades soon. I can hear the wood creaking and cracking from
inside. One good push and they would be in. They are literally
squeezing the house like a zit. We have begun taking shifts on the
roof. If it looks like they are breaking through, the watcher will
yell for everyone. We have no escape plan, though. My suggestion is
to move to the roof. It is hard enough for us to get to, so I am
sure it would be impossible for the brain dead to get to us. We
wouldn't last up there long, though; the lack of food and water
would kill us.

The only plan I have would involve somehow
getting all the zombies on one side of the house, then someone
making a mad dash for the truck Paula drove to get here. I have no
way to get all the zombies to one side, though. Hell, getting down
there would be a death wish for anyone, not that the truck would
hold all of us anyway.

I made some signs and put them on the roof in
case a helicopter happens to fly by. Maybe they will see we are
alive. Doubtful, though. I haven't seen anything in the sky in
weeks. No plane, hell, I haven't even seen any birds. My guess is
they are all down on the ground, picking the flesh off the dead.
There’s so much food that their little fat bellies are probably too
full to fly! God, I wish I had that problem right now. I guess
that’s the irony here. Humans are the ones that normally have
plenty of food, while everything else starves. Now we are starving
while everything else gets its fill.

Tonya is inside, trying to keep our minds off
food; I don't think it's working, though. Spook does not look
amused. Neither does Paula. Ken is trying to figure out who took
the food. He is closely looking for clues, like that show
C
.
S
.
I
. To him, everyone is a suspect. Brett
and Cole are wrestling around in the living room, next to a
ten-foot tall Frankenstein. I am sitting here, tapping away at the
keyboard. I can hear bellies rumbling over the moaning from
outside. I haven't gone into panic mode yet, but I can feel it
coming.

We are trying to come up with a plan to get
out of here. The problem with coming up with a plan is we are all
very hungry and can't think straight. We also can't seem to agree
on anything. Spook just wants to throw a few grenades and shoot a
LAW rocket at the crowd to clear them out enough for one of us to
make it to the truck. Ken wants to do my plan of distracting them
so one of us can sneak to the truck. Brett and Cole both agree with
Spook but only because they want to see the explosions. Tonya is
indifferent; she wants to sit right here and see what happens.
Paula has not said a word since last night, after she and Spook had
a huge fight.

I spent the majority of last night
reinforcing the barricades throughout the house. I have no doubt
they will break through tomorrow, if not tonight. We have every
piece of furniture strapped and hammered to the walls and windows.
The only way to see outside is from the roof. Anything that is not
bolted to the ground has been used. At least once an hour, I can
hear them breaking through. When you have thousands of zombies
surrounding the small place you’re in, eventually something is
going to break. It is just a matter of time before they are in here
tearing us to shreds.

I can hear them all around us. I think it
would be safer for us to move up to the roof now. That way, when
they break through, we will have a little time to

I hear a truck outside! It sounds like it is
getting closer. Who the hell could be out there??

I have moved up to the roof now. Some idiot
is driving a truck through the yard, running over all the zombies!
I have never seen so much blood! He must have hit a thousand of
them. This guy is psychotic! He is hanging his head out of the cab
cheering for himself! He can barely keep the truck moving in a
straight line because of all the blood and guts that are now
covering the ground like snow in wintertime.

Who would have thought our salvation this
time would come in the form of a crazy, long-haired guy in a Mac
truck? I have to go get some weapons. It looks like we might be on
the road again!

On the road again.

Oh thank God, we are out of that house, even
if we are with a true nut job. The mysterious truck driver, who
goes by the name Malice, said he had been driving down the road
when he saw the signs I put on the roof. He said he wanted to wait
for just the right moment to come get us. I guess for him, the
right moment was when two thousand zombies were surrounding the
house! After he went on his driving rampage, he backed the truck
into the house...yes, literally into the house. We scraped off all
the chunks of zombie meat and bone, opened the back of the truck,
and piled in quickly. Once we were in, Malice pulled out as fast as
he could, though it was a slippery ride. The amount of blood and
crushed bodies was staggering. Hands and legs moved on their own
along the ground like hundreds of ants.

We got quite a few miles down the road before
he pulled the truck over. When the door flew open, a
scruffy-looking guy with long black hair and a long black beard to
match greeted us. He said he was a truck driver and was just trying
to get home. He lived hundreds of miles away from where we were. He
said he had a girlfriend back home he was trying to get to. (It
seems we all have someone to get home to.) He said he had been in
Texas delivering something for the government when all hell broke
loose. He told us how he was staying with his brother Jay and his
wife Kellie in Texas after he made his drop. He said they were held
up in the house for days before the zombies finally broke through
their barricades. He described in great detail how Jay fought off
what seemed like a hundred before he was finally overpowered and
mauled. He told how Kellie was so devastated at what she had just
seen that she ran to Jay, only to be eaten alive within seconds. He
said right then and there he would make a pact to kill as many of
them as he could while he was on his way back to his girl Seras. He
said in total, he has taken out more than three thousand. Hell,
probably most of them at our safe house.

I am not sure what to make of this Malice
guy. He may be just a guy that is upset at the way things have
gone, but to me, he seems more like a serial killer. The guy just
stares at me, like he knows who I am and what I have done. Maybe
it's just me, though. I do have to cut him a little slack, though;
he did bring quite a bit of food. He had been stopping here and
there at different places, stocking up on supplies. We ate really
well last night and this morning.

It wasn't until earlier this afternoon that I
realized we were going the wrong way. We were heading away from the
city! I needed to go through the city to get to my house. Now I am
even further away than when I started. Don't get me wrong, I am
very thankful for him rescuing us, but now what?!

We have been sitting in one spot the majority
of the day. We are on top of a hill so we can see in all
directions. We are also debating what to do. I will not waver on my
feelings. I’m going back through the city to get Darcy. End of
discussion. I will go with or without the psychotic Malice guy.
Spook and Paula want to stay with him. That figures! Two people
with Halloween names want to stick together. Ken and Tonya don't
really want to go back to the city, but they get creeped out by the
truck driver also. Brett and Cole said they will follow me wherever
I go. We are going to talk about it more after we eat.

Tonya just heard a noise in the bushes. We
are going to investigate.

It was the hardest thing I ever had to
do.

We found a little boy in the bushes. He was
no older than six months or a year. He was a zombie. He just lay on
the ground, arms so still he could not move them other than to
flail them around. He moaned and looked at us. He wanted to eat us.
My guess is his mother of father put him there to hide him from the
zombies, unaware he was already infected, or maybe they knew he was
infected and put him there, unable to do what needed to be done,
what we knew needed to be done.

The decision was easy; it was the act that
was not. Paula wanted to just leave him there. Malice wanted to
"bash his brains against a goddamn radiator." We had to make it
quick. Leaving him there to starve was inhumane. What if someone
came across him and got bitten by him? Then we would have one more
zombie to worry about. No, it had to be done. But who would do it?
We all voted that Malice would have nothing to do with this. Spook
and Paula wanted nothing of it. I did not want Brett or Cole to
have this looming over their heads for the rest of their lives. So
it was between Ken, Tonya, and me.

I found some pieces of hay close by and cut
one of them shorter than the others. We decided the only way was to
draw straws. Cole mixed the hay up and held it in his hand. We all
drew to see who would end the life of this child. First Ken, then
Tonya, then me. My piece of hay matched Ken’s.

Tonya drew the short straw.

She asked us all to leave her alone with him.
I gave her a shotgun. I didn't want any mistakes. We all walked
away from them. I could hear Tonya talking to the little boy. She
told him she was sorry. She begged for forgiveness. And then she
shot him.

The rest of the night, we all sat in total
silence. What was there to say? May God forgive us.

Last night while we were asleep, Malice
thought it would be a good idea to just leave. Normally, I would
not have cared, but we were in the trailer of the truck. We all
awoke to the rumble of the engine and the sudden take off. The
bastard locked us in "for our own good" and took off for home. He
said he knew going back to the city was suicide, and he would not
let us do that. We were banging on the walls trying to get his
attention and trying to get him to stop. That’s when I heard his
trademarked
whoop
as he ran over groups of living dead.
Every time he would run over a few, it would knock us around. He
began swerving to hit them. The truck would violently yank to the
left or the right, and then we would feel the familiar bump and
hear the hoot from Malice. As much fun as this was for him, we were
getting pretty banged up.