Of all the things you could find on the road during a zombie apocalypse, the undead kids were always the worst.
I mean, the regular undead and the dogs were bad enough, but the kid versions really messed with your head. I watched from my hiding place among the gas pumps as the little walking corpse shambled around the parking lot. She had been a little girl, really cute and adorable. Her dress, or what remained of her dress, was a little pink frilly job with lace at the neck. She dragged her right leg behind her. The foot was nearly chewed off, and the bones were exposed. Her chest cavity was pretty much gone, and her lower jaw was missing. The only sound she could make was a horrible gurgling sound, like someone was pouring milk down her throat as she was trying to scream.
What was she, seven, eight years old? Damn shame. She’s never going to grow up, go to school, or dance at a prom.
Never going to bring home a boy that pisses off her Dad.
I noticed she was clutching a headless doll. It was blood stained and extremely filthy. I think that detail unsettled me most of all. Sometimes you see the dead walking around clutching the last thing they ever touched. It could be an empty gun from their last battle, or a steak knife, or even something as mundane as a coffee cup. The kids usually have a teddy bear or some other favorite toy in their cold, dead hands.
The headless doll was a new one. I’d never seen a zombie holding one before.
I watched for a few more minutes. She didn’t notice me among the gas pumps, so I guess she was pretty far gone. Usually these zombies catch on to fresh meat pretty quick and come running for a quick meal.
I knew what I had to do. I knew I had to put her down before she drew more of her undead friends to the gas station. I drew my gun and stepped out from my hiding place to put the little bastard out of her misery. She noticed me and began that horrible noise they all make. It’s usually a high pitched squeal, or a low, menacing growl. Without her lower jaw, though, it was more of a low gurgle that raised goose bumps on my arm. No matter how many of these things I put down, that sound still causes the the little hairs on my neck to stand up.
Then there’s the eyes. They are usually yellow or red. The yellows are more common, but it’s the rare reds that could be a problem. They’re more violent and hungry, and will attack on sight. With Red-Eyes, you shoot first and run away quickly.
And you better hit them in the head. It’s the only way to put them down. Just like in the movies. Sometimes that doesn’t even work on the first try.
One of her eyes was gone; the other was yellow. She raised the arm without the doll and started dragging herself over to me, very slowly.
Sometimes these things can be pretty fast. I recall an incident with one a few weeks ago. It was a soccer mom, I think. I stumbled on her in another parking lot somewhere long ago. For a minute, I thought she was a survivor, until I saw her dead, yellow eyes and the fresh blood on her designer clothes. She had been feeding. Her victim was a younger girl, a teenager. I hoped it wasn’t her daughter. Maybe her meal had been part of her carpool or something.
She was one of the fast ones. As soon as she saw me, she made an unholy shriek and ran in my direction. I was ready, and took her out with my rifle. It took two shots. I missed on the first, and hit her in the shoulder. The second shot got her right between the eyes. She was going so fast, she actually ran for a few more steps before falling. I put a bullet in her last meal too, just in case.
The little girl zombie at the gas station wasn’t going anywhere fast. She could barely move under her own power. Besides her mangled right foot, most of the bones and muscles in her legs and lower extremities were either broken or missing. As I approached, I circled around her to assess the situation. The best she could do was turn slightly and moan. She was too far gone to be able to chase me.
The back of her head was mostly gone as well. How the hell was she still walking around? Some of these things can be tough customers. I’ve seen a few with missing limbs crawling on the ground to find their next meal. Others had the skin mostly peeled from their bodies, their skeletons exposed like a realistic Halloween costume. Sometimes, they’re burned or crushed beyond recognition, but still walking around and feeding. Then there were the dogs.
Nobody figured that dogs could turn. They ate infected meat from the ones walking around, and then they turned into undead dogs. The turned dogs were always bad news. They’re a hell of a lot faster, and they work in groups. It’s good old-fashioned nightmare fuel. You must always avoid the dogs.
I followed the little girl zombie for a few seconds, getting ready to blow her rotting brains out. I also looked around to see if she was alone. I didn’t want any of her undead buddies sneaking up on me. It was just her and me in this former gas station. A long time ago, people would stop here on the way to work to gas up their cars and continue on with their ordinary lives. Mom and Dad would fill up their coffee cups with inexpensive brew and the kids would buy their sugary snacks. Now the only remaining cars are the stripped hulks abandoned here when the fuel ran out. The coffee and sugary snacks are long gone. Mom and Dad and the kids are dead, or walking around feeding on the living as one big happy zombie family.
It really hurts to think about the old world, before it all went bad.
The little girl zombie stumbled, and fell at my feet. She reached for me in hunger. It might have been my imagination, but I almost saw her begging me to kill her and put her out of her misery. I put the gun up to her head. I wanted to tell her it would be okay, and that her perpetual nightmare was finally over. They are never grateful. They’re just animals, living only to feed. I pulled the trigger, and her head exploded like an overripe melon.
Scratch another Yellow-Eye.
I turned my attention to the gas station. I took a quick look around to see if there are any more nasty surprises inside. You can never be too careful. Not in this new world.
The building was clear. The place, a virtual time capsule, was frozen at the exact time the stuff hit the fan. All the gas was, of course, gone. Also gone was most of the food and water. What was left was either spoiled and useless or spread on the ground. The floor was a macabre mixture of smashed food, garbage, and dried blood. A few spent shotgun shells were scattered on the black-and-white tiled floor. This place must have been a war zone when everybody tried to find safety. I could almost see the throng of people trying to buy or steal anything that wasn’t tied down. The first few days of the outbreak were pure hell. I didn’t find much: a few unopened bottles of water and a few batteries. Everything else was useless. The register was crammed full of old twenty dollar bills. Maybe someone could use them as toilet paper.
I found a few unopened packages of beef jerky near the cash register. Beef jerky is not my favorite, but you can’t pass up a meal when it presents itself. I bit off a sizable portion, and started to chew. The dried meat was salty and felt a little like shoe leather in my mouth. I ignored the horrible taste, and swallowed. It went down hard, but the nourishment was welcome. I threw a few packages in my backpack. It might come in handy someday. I finished my little snack, and then started poking around the counter looking for more goodies.
I heard a noise behind me. Without thinking, I turned around with my handgun already drawn. All these weeks on the road running from the undead have honed my skills to a fine point. The slightest noise gets me ready for battle.
It’s only a cat. I’ve drawn my weapon on a skinny, little gray cat with a big round face trying to eat a bloated sugar doughnut on the floor. One of its paws was mangled beyond repair. Like me, this little guy has had to struggle a bit to survive.
So far, all the cats that I have encountered have been normal. I bent down, and extended my hand palm up to show that I was friendly. The cat would have nothing of it, and arched its back. It showed its teeth and howled a little bit. I guess it had gone a little feral.
Okay, little fella. I’ll leave you alone.
Just to show him I wasn’t a bad guy, I ripped a few pieces of beef jerky into bite-sized chunks, and dropped them in front of the cat’s nose. Hunger overcame fear, and it pounced on the small meal like a playful kitten.
Enjoy, little buddy. Maybe one day you can help me out of a jam.
I waved goodbye to my little feline companion, and walked outside into the fading sunlight.
I thought about staying the night here. My legs and back were aching, and I could use a nice long rest. However, the little girl zombie may not have been alone. I decided to walk on down the road. When it gets dark, I’ll find a place to bed down and rest. You do not want to travel at night. Things get much worse at night.
As a walked away from the gas station, I noticed the sign It said $3.58/gallon for regular unleaded. Not a bad price for gas during an apocalypse.
Another bad thing about the end of the world: the dreams.
Cities burning. Long lines of the undead walking out of them. I am alone with a bow and arrow, trying to put them down. It’s not working.
Slowly they approach. As they get closer, I recognize my Mom and sister. My Dad shows up as well, although he died long before the outbreak. I fire arrow after arrow, but they keep coming. I am running out of arrows and the situation is grim. Then I catch a glimpse of her.
It’s Gia, the woman I married. Her face is nothing more than a skull, but it’s her. I know the dress she’s wearing and I smell her body spray. She always hated snooty perfume. She gets closer and closer. Her jaws open to take a bite as the other undead raise their voices in a shrill shriek of victory.
And then …
I jump awake from the nightmare. I was back in the real world, covered in a thin film of sweat with my heart pounding in my chest. It’s okay. It was only a dream. I got up and took a look around. The sun was just coming up. It was that between-time in the early morning; not quite light, but with the night and all its horrors fading away. Now I remember. After my little sightseeing tour of the gas station, I found this little sanctuary. I walked a few more miles down the road till the sun started going down, and then stopped here for a little rest. Like I said, you don’t want to travel at night.
It was an automobile body shop. The doors to the service bays were sturdy and somewhat zombie-proof. It was a good place to stay the night. In one of the bays was a really slick American muscle car that was just about complete. It was a really nice car that even looked drivable. I thought about taking it, but what do I do about gas and oil? Not to mention it wasn’t exactly subtle, painted bright orange and all. I bet the exhaust could wake the dead.
Wake the dead. That’s a good one.
I opened the sturdy American-built steel door and sat inside. It even smelled new. This would have been a great car for a cruise-in or car show. Speeding down the road with your best girl at your side. Really sad. It’s going to sit here, maybe forever, till it rusts back into the earth. I debated about taking this glorious machine out for a ride. (Hey, if you have to fight the undead, might as well do it in style.) The fact is, though, the car was a liability. The loud exhaust would attract too much attention from bad people, both living and dead. As a former car guy, I decided to try to slow down the ravages of Mother Nature. I rooted around the shop, found a tarp, and covered up the sleeping beast. Maybe someone in the future can put this dinosaur from a simpler time to good use.
My thoughts turned to breakfast. I grabbed my backpack and took an inventory. A couple cans of vegetables and assorted soups, the bags of beef jerky from the gas station last night, a couple of candy bars, oatmeal cream pies, crackers, and a half jar of peanut butter were stuffed in my backpack. A few rolls of mints and a few bottles of water, too. It didn’t seem like enough. I was going to have to find more. Easy-to-find foodstuffs were getting a little rare. Most of the ready made and canned foods was already used up. You could usually find more on the interstate, what with all the abandoned trucks and cars, but that’s dangerous. The undead really liked the interstate, so food runs could be suicide.
I settled for crackers and peanut butter. A small meal, but it felt like Thanksgiving.
Actually, I was lucky. I had at least a little food to keep me going. There were reports of people resorting to dogs and cats after the food ran out. After that, people turned to rats and mice. After the rats and mice ran out, there were reports of cannibalism. That was mostly in the big cities. Kind of glad I didn’t see any of that. I think I’d rather put a bullet in my brain than eat my neighbor.
After breakfast, I always tried to give my weapons a quick once-over. I looked over my handgun first. Clean and ready to go. To tell you the truth, I have no idea what kind of gun I have been using, but it has been flawless so far. I “liberated” it from a gun dealer along with a few boxes of hollow-point bullets. My rifle was next. Again, I do not know what type, but I believe it was some kind of semi-automatic. I took it off a dead policeman. Actually it was a mostly dead policeman. The ammunition is tougher to find, so I try to use the weapon sparingly. Clean and fully loaded, it’s ready to go as well. I didn’t know anything about guns before all this stuff happened, but I learned quick. If you don’t learn quickly, you die out here.
Next are my edged weapons. I carry a large knife and a modern tomahawk. The tomahawk is all kinds of cool; hardened steel with a shiny chrome finish. It has a very sharp axe head, good for hacking and chopping. The other side comes to a sharp point, good for piercing soft, undead skulls. It’s a great weapon. It’s saved my life more times than I can count.
I also had a secret knife enclosed in a flap in the bottom of my backpack. It was a small folding job with a sharp blade and a cool carbon-fiber handle. I reached into my backpack, and felt the small lump in the bottom that reassured me it was still there.
It was my last chance, close-in weapon in case things got really bad. It could be shoved into a zombie’s eyesocket or cut the throat of a living adversary. So far, it has never seen the light of day.
Time to go. It would be nice to stay in the body shop. It seems relatively safe and out of the way. The truth is, you have to keep moving or the undead will find you. I don’t know how, but they always seem to find my nighttime hiding places no matter how secure they seem. You have to keep moving to survive. Even as I stood outside ready to start walking again, I saw a few scattered zombies in the distance walking up the road towards the shop. Looks like they found me again. I take care to try and get rid of all the evidence that someone camped here, and then hit the road.
It was really a nice morning. What month was it? October? I lost track of days long ago. The air was cool, with a faint wisp of dewy fog hanging over the grass. If it weren’t for the zombies, it would have been a great day for a drive in the country. How long has it been since normal? Eight months, maybe. Somehow it seems longer. I remember sitting at my desk at home, working, when strange reports of group violence started coming up on the news. I mostly ignored them and continued to work. I had a deadline, and my client was waiting. My wife Gia kept calling me, asking what we should do. I told her I didn’t know what to do. Besides, it would probably blow over. Then the reports got even more serious.
The violence got worse, and then it spread. Suddenly the army got called out, and they began telling people to go to designated shelters like schools and hospitals. Then the world really turned upside down.
The designated shelters became zombie breeding grounds. One infected human could start an outbreak in the shelter. Large groups would then break out and roam the countryside looking for food. Things rapidly got out of control. Governments fell, cities burned, and the trappings of society quickly fell apart. After the Internet and power grid fell, it was panic time. The highways quickly clogged, and then became zombie buffets. It was pure hell. During all the chaos, Gia made one last call. She was going to try and leave work and go to a shelter. It was the last time I talked to her or any living person on my cellphone. I never saw her again. By the time I got to the shelter, it was empty. I only had time to collect a few supplies and weapons and get the hell out of town before it was overrun.
I hung around my hometown for a while looking for Gia, but I never found her. Then I walked around nearby towns for a few weeks looking for any normality. I found nothing but dead towns, hungry zombies, and desperate survivors.
One day, I started walking west. It was the only logical direction left. The other directions were all dead and gone. I’ve been walking ever since looking for a safe place and surviving day-to-day for Gia. Maybe she’s alive somewhere, but I don’t hold out much hope. She is probably dead or one of those things. After seeing what these things are like, I really hope she’s dead.