Zompocalypse |
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An entry into the January 2008 Twilight Creations contest by Jeff Khoury
I awoke from a much needed rest to a world still overrun by the living dead. The four of us had barricaded ourselves in a tiny skateboard shop ten days ago. We'd already eaten all of the shop's novelty candy: sugar bones, skulls and chocolate bars, and if we didn't find an alternate food source soon, we wouldn't have to worry about the zombies devouring our flesh.
The girls were still sleeping, huddled in a nest of band hoodies. James, who was on watch, was pacing excitedly.
"Vince!" he hissed. "Come look at this!" He motioned to one of the spy-holes in the barricade. I peered out into the cold, bleak dawn. The plaza outside was empty.
"Where'd everybody go?"
"They're gone! I haven't seen one all night?"
"Gone?"
"Yes!"
"They're not just hiding somewhere?"
"What? Have you got a brain cramp? Zombies aren't that smart!"
"So they're gone."
"Look, I think we need to make a break for it."
"If we stay here, we're dead," James declared flatly. He was smoking a thin, foul smelling clove cigarette. We may all have been in danger of starvation, but there were plenty of those to go around.
"If we go out there, we're dead even faster," Amy argued.
"Bah, they probably all died waiting for us. I mean, sooner or later they have to eat something."
"They're dead," Brittany said meekly.
"Exactly!"
"James is right," I interrupted. "We have to try. You don't want to die in here do you?"
Brittany shook her head, then Amy.
"Excellent! Brits, what are our supplies?"
James snickered.
"Well, we've got the fire axe, some 2x4's, one grenade left from the army surplus store, the chainsaw is out of gas - we used it up repairing the barricade. No other weapons. Um, no water. No food."
"That should make packing easy," James quipped, hefting the fire axe.
"I'm gonna get the first aid kit from the back," Amy declared.
"Good idea. Do you think we could make that bottle of rubbing alcohol into a Molotov cocktail?"
"Sure Vince."
"Excellent."
"This isn't so bad," James noted as we slipped across the empty parking lot.
Reaching the street, scattered with a few abandoned automobiles, we left the shopping plaza behind us. There was a grocery store across the road. Its windows were dark.
"There's one!" Amy hissed.
We froze, like a family of woodshop armed deer.
A lone zombie shambled out of the grocer's doorway. He raised one meaty, putrescent appendage and let out a piercing wail.
"Wuuuhhh!"
From the shops behind us, and the supermarket before us came dozens of answering groans and growls.
"Nnnggghhh!"
"Uuurrr!"
"Ggghhhaaa!"
A host of zombies began pouring from the stores.
"I don't think they're dead!" Amy cried.
"Zombies aren't that smart, eh?" I asked.
"I, uh," James licked his lips, "may have made a slight miscalculation."
"We have to get back to the skate shop!" Brittany shouted as she bolted back the way we came, directly towards a small, but growing, crowd of the undead.
"Brittany!" James shouted, starting after her.
"Forget it!" I grabbed him by the shoulder, "She's lost all the marbles in her head! She's done for!"
Brittany reached the skate shop, but the barricade was too heavy for her to move by herself. The fear was bright in her eyes as she collapsed in hysterical paralysis.
The zombies descended.
It was over in seconds.
Meanwhile, I was fumbling with the Molotov.
"Brittany!" James broke away.
Trying to hold both cocktail, and James, with my butterfingers, I lost both. The glass bottle shattered on the pavement as James rushed the leader who was orchestrating the horde.
"Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse," I cursed.
Propelled by a raging adrenaline surge, James hurled himself into a crowd of the undead, the edge of the fire axe flashing in the early morning sun.
James muscled his way through to the zombie master, dropping the broken axe handle at his feet. Covered in blood and gore, panting, James said, "hey, your shoe's untied."
The zombie looked down. "Hnngghh?"
James clobbered him with a solid haymaker.
He didn't fall.
"Hnngghh?" the zombie asked again, his outstretched arms pawing at James as if searching for an answer.
Other zombies pressed forward, and with a scream, James fell under their weight. Amid the scrabbling of limbs, and the squirting of blood, there was a glimpse of metal-the grenade pin-ring on James' outstretched finger.
I grabbed Amy, "run!"
We stumbled down the street as, behind us, a shower of viscera wet the asphalt.
For several blocks the shadow of zombies filtering out of darkened buildings dogged our way. Ahead, there was a police cruiser straddling both lanes. Instinctively, we ran to it.
"The keys are still in it." Amy sobbed with relief.
"Get in, I'll drive."
"Hey look," she said, pointing to the back seat, "A shotgun!"
"And lots of ammo," I noted several scattered cartridge boxes.
Blessedly, the cruiser started on the first try. It even had a little bit of gas left.
A little bit.
We drove for a time, slowly through streets choked with wrecked cars and reeking zombies, blasting any that got too close, and running over those that got even closer. I put on the siren as we plowed through one tightly packed group, then, the windshield wipers.
But we couldn't seem to get out of town: too many wrecks blocking too many roads, too many zombies blocking too many alleys. We were all turned around with a bad sense of direction-lost.
"Out," Amy announced, chucking the shotgun into the backseat. We were rolling closer to another knot of undead. I punched the gas, but instead of roaring forward, the car shuddered weakly and coasted to a stop.
I looked down at the gas gauge, it read "E".
I looked at Amy.
I looked at the advancing zombie horde.
I looked at Amy.
"We're screwed."
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