Welcome to Strange.. Population Zero.. Or- How I survived the Zombie Apocalypse.

Friday, February 23, 2084 

 Sometimes you know-you hear about really bad shit before it actually happens to you on the TV. Like take for instance this whole situation that the world currently finds itself in- they’re calling it the real zombie apocalypse. some nitwit lab tech got infected by some stupid virus that some bio chemist had been working on for some fucked up government agency. He got out-went bonkers and bit somebody and infected them, and it just kept spreading from there. Sure, Sure, it was a bit more complicated than that, but that was the gist of it. Next thing you know it's all over the news, in every major city, riots, mass hysteria, people getting infected by the thousands. End of the line-Zombie apocalypse, front and center, live and in technicolor. Hell, even though I saw a lot of it on TV before everything went off the air, I still either found myself not believing it or not caring about it. That was 13 months ago, then it came to my neighborhood, I lived in Pleasant city. on Primrose street, see, the first one I actually saw was what was looking a lot like my neighbor down the street, Fred Boxner. kinda tall, skinny lanky whatever, always did walk a bit slow, never noticed the blood on his shirt or the drool dripping down his chin, still had that same vacant look in his eyes that he always did though. 

I remember it was just before breakfast on a Monday morning, the sun was out and there was a little chill in the air as I stepped out onto the porch. I sat my coffee cup down and watched ol Fred drag his sorry undead ass up the empty street, and then it struck me- I never liked that prick much anyway. Fred was the type to always have an angle on everything, the rotten bastard never ever bought his own shit, if you had something that he could use he would borrow it by hook or by crook, and now that I was thinking about it that prick still had my weed whacker that he’d borrowed from me over ten months ago. So here he came, lumbering down the street, and that’s about when I had my first epiphany. If this really was the end of the line for the whole damn human race, and there really wasn’t any more law and order to be had, I suppose that left me with the only option that I had left, if ol Fred really was now a full-fledged zombie I guess that left me with little choice in the matter but to go into survival mode. See-the problem most people have always had with me was what many of my neighbors considered an unhealthy appetite for automatic weapons. and I own a LOT of automatic weapons. 

So I walked back into the house not panicking at all, I went into my special room and retrieved The S&W automatic 12 gauge shotgun and loaded a fresh clip into it before returning to the street to greet ol Fred. So he was still about halfway down the block when he first saw me, I could tell right away by looking into his beady little undead eyes that he was getting excited at the prospect of having a brain sandwich at my expense. So I stepped down onto the sidewalk and called out to him. “Hey Fred? unless you’re coming down here to return my weed whacker and lawn mower, you might want to take your scrawny-ugly slobbering undead ass in a different direction! this isn’t going to end well for you ol buddy” “Gaaaaaaaaahhh... Gnnnnning… Raaaaaawr!” “Think it through, Fred, you don’t want none of this.” “Arrrrrrrgh... gnaaaaaaagh!” “C’mon Fred... You know I have issues.” So, ol Fred, yeah, he never was the sharpest knife in the drawer. So I raised the barrel of the S&W And the first round that I fired off took his left leg, it made a squishy crunching sound as he fell, the blood oozing out of his severed leg wasn't even red anymore, it was black, and thick... like oil.. He dropped to the ground, still making those nasty gurgling noises. But I could tell the pain wasn’t registering, he was way too far gone. 

I could already smell him from down the street, and he smelled like a combination of rotting flesh and pure shit, his skin had this slimey green color to it, and it looked like it was sliding off his body, exposing rotting muscle tissue, Fred had been gone for awhile now it seemed, and whatever this was looking back up at me through those dark souless eyes, it wasn't Fred anymore, now it was something else.  I calmly walked up to him and took off his head with the very next shot. I looked around and didn’t see anybody else, and I also decided that I wasn't waiting around either, so I went home and packed up the king cab Truck with supplies and enough guns, and ammo along with a few other weapons that I had lying around & whatever food I had to last me awhile. I had a reserve gas tank installed on it awhile back in case of emergencies, the primary and the reserve were both full. So I got it packed up and decided to head out for the country, strange I didn’t recall seeing much of anybody on the way out of town, I guess they were just faster than me to see the urgency of the situation and high tailed it out of there. So with an uncertain future ahead of me and one dead ex neighbor behind me, I headed for the sunset. My name is Jacob P. Callahan and this is my new life now here in the zombie Apocalypse. things are gonna get strange I suppose, even stranger than before, my name is Jacob- but you can call me Crash.

Tuesday February 27th, 9:37 AM. 2084, Gastone Kansas, ten miles from Wichita.

She was kinda hot, you know- for a dead chick. A slobbering- drooling dead chick that was running her dead little ass off. I knew that I was safe for the moment,  being locked inside of a moving vehicle with the windows rolled up, and so my morbid curiosity was beginning to get the better of me, and then- seeing as how she was all alone, I just had to see for myself where exactly she was running off to. That’s when I spotted the short pudgy fat guy running HIS ass off right down the middle of Fordham road- Peckham County,  just twenty yards ahead of her. Sure he had twenty yards on her at least, but she was gaining on him fast. You know- sometimes when you see that a situation is dire, maybe not for you per se, but you can tell by watching events unfold that someone is about to have a really fucked up day. The fat guy- yeah, his morning was definitely heading downhill fast, his morning? Yeah, it was gaining on him fast, and it looked hungry. So I pulled the truck in behind her about 150 feet back, and I know that she must have been really hungry because she didn’t even break stride to look back at me.  So I took a deep breath and carefully assessed fatty’s situation, and it had become readily apparent that I was his only shot at survival at that moment. I gave the truck a little more gas as I reached for the Glock nine on the passenger seat.  I pulled up beside her about fifteen feet away as I rolled down the window and trained the Glock on her head.

"Hey baby... Sup?”

“Gaaaaaaaagh!”

She turned toward me and all it took was one shot in the head to drop her like a stone. I eased my foot off the gas pedal not wanting to catch up too quick, I stopped to study the body of the person I just shot in the head, the person who used to be a vibrant beautiful young female. I thought about it for a minute, how in the fuck does this kind of shit happen here? this is small town America, we were ten miles from the nearest major city, How did it get here? Meanwhile the big guy- yeah, him, he’d turned onto Valley Creek road and was running toward an open field but still in the middle of the road. I pulled up beside of him and he was wheezing really heavy, covered in sweat, his face was red as a beet, I thought he was going to drop right there in the middle of the street. I left the window rolled down he didn'’t even look at me. I swear the poor bastard looked like he was ready to drop. I imediately tried to recall everthing that I'd ever heard about zombies, either real or imagined, maybe there was some truth to some of it. I tried to play it out in my mind, what to ask him. Obviously this shit was contagious, I was going to have to be careful. 

“Morning.”

He didn’t break stride to look over at me, I think something akin to shock had set in. Then his face was getting paler by the second.

“She isn’t chasing you anymore man, I put her down about a half a mile back.” I Told Him.

I slowed down the truck as he slowly staggered to an eventual stop, before he collapsed against my left front fender trying to catch his breath. I studied him for several minutes trying to determine whether or not he’d been infected. there seemed to still be too much intelligence in his eyes, intelligence mixed with fear and uncertainty.

“Have you been bitten?” I asked almost casually.

He looked up at me shaking his head no.

“Scratched?”

Again no.

“You got a name?”

Still half out of breath he told me that his name was Louis Taft and that the woman that was chasing after him, the woman that wanted so desperately to eat his brain- the one that I shot in the head. That zombie that had once been a fully functional human being-  was his daughter. Sometimes- you can say I’m sorry a million times, and no matter how many times you can hear those words coming out of your own mouth, it never seems to be enough. Louis Taft was broken now, much like the rest of the world, or what was left of it. I still couldn’t be certain or not whether he’d been bitten, So I told him to climb in the back of the truck and I threw him a box of Granola bars and a few Terryaki sticks in case he was hungry. It would have to do for the time being. We sat in the middle of the road, the truck still running exchanging bits of information, what we knew to be true and filling in the gaps on what we weren't quite clear on, he and his daughter had been downtown when the shit hit the fan, they were one block from the train station where it all seemed to start from, his daughter had been bit, before they jumped in his car, she turned within minutes right there in the back seat, she freaked out, he hit a tree and bailed out of the car and took off down the street, when he looked back she was hot on his heels. The rest I knew. I turned the truck down Valley Creek road and headed for State route 6. there was a small little gas station/general store not too far from there, we would be needing supplies soon.

In a different light.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The General store for the most part was a pretty good haul, the electric was still not working, the gas pumps were still useless so we used my hand siphon pump to drain the tanks on four cars that hadn't been raided yet, I scrounged enough gas to refill both of the tanks in the truck and filled a couple of cans that we'd found in the garage part of the building. While everything was clear we went into the store and scrounged up a box of canned goods and some crackers and canned juice,  it was obvious that someone had all but cleaned out whatever they could carry, we loaded the rest into the back of the truck and headed for the county line. We crossed over into Crooke County at about 5:15 PM, it felt strange not seeing a lot of cars going down one of the most traveled roads in Cooke County, on State Route 6 we passed a few here and there that had went off the road for whatever reason, but mostly it just felt like Louis and me were the only two people left in the world, then, six miles from Vicksburgh we found out different.

There was a little country store with one Jeep CJ in the parking lot, I slowed the truck to a stop when we saw the ten lumbering figures trying to claw their way into the store. inside the front window there was  a young blonde haired girl- probably a teenager judging from her size, she looked to be a shade under five foot ten and what I’d guessed was her little brother, they were trapped by the drooling mob. I pulled the S&W auto shotgun from behind the seat in the king cab and opened the door the first two saw me and started stumbling toward the truck.  I told Louis that I would distract them while he got the kids out of the store and brought them back to the truck. He nodded and jumpped down behind me. I splattered the first two all over the road, the blood and guts spraying in every direction, the stench of rotting flesh hung in the air, but the rest knew that we were there then.  I grabbed another clip for the S&W and drew them away from the store there were only six of them left, six snarling –drooling bugs, I had more than enough rounds to take care of the problem.  I cut the last one down as Louis was pulling the kids from the store. One more straggler came running around the corner, headed for the truck. I put two rounds in its guts almost cutting it in half, as it made a wet plopping sound as it landed on the hot pavement.

I took another stray out with  a shot from the Glock Nine. The kids made it to the back of the truck just as the next wave of bugs came running out from the behind the store, I fired whatever I had left in the the auto shotgun into the snarling crowd, Louis was still about 75 feet from the truck when he stopped in the middle of the parking lot, he looked at me and yelled at me to run, he picked up a club from the side of the road, for a split second I froze as I saw him running into the crowd of zombies swinging the club violently. they stopped their advance and all of their attention was on Louis Taft, they swarmed over him like an army of angry ants, making slurping and crunching sounds as they ripped off chucks of his flesh. I jumped into the cab of the truck and slammed it into gear and headed in the opposite direction. The two kids in the back hung on for dear life, and as I looked into the rear view mirror I couldn’t see him anymore, they had fed. I paused if only for the briefest of moments in my mind to give thanks to someone that I barely knew, but sacrificed himself so that I could escape. Louis Taft- was a broken man then.. or at least he was.. Now? he’s one of them.  

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