After a grueling trip home, I was exhausted. It was about midnight, after all. However, I had to keep going. I packed up clothes, pictures, trinkets, cameras, anything of value. I have a decent-sized off-road utility trailer, so that got partially filled up with all that stuff. My Jeep I filled with my guns, ammo, other weapons, my gold and silver rounds, all my tools, and cans of gas. Grabbed my local stash of cash, about 9 grand.
Then I went to the 24-hour Super Walmart.
Now, we each had over 4 years of food per person stored at the cabin, but it’s all freeze-dried and dehydrated stuff. Not all that exciting. I wanted some good stuff if the world was ending.
So I literally bought most of Walmart’s canned fruits. Filled up an entire shopping cart of peaches and pears and pineapples. Took that out to the trailer and dumped it. Went back and bought another cart of canned vegetables. Then I went for the canned meats like stews, tuna, chicken, spam, chili. Took two carts for all that.
More trips for soups, vegetables, and then the boxes of potato dishes and pasta dishes. More trips for cooking oil, spices, and more stuff I don’t even no what. At some point, one of the workers started helping me so things went faster. Still it took almost four hours.
“Uh, sir?” the worker, Stan, had asked me. “What’s all this for, if you don’t mind me asking?”
I thought about it for a moment, then spoke straight up. “Might be the zombies, Stan. You should get ready. Get some food and shit.” I tipped him a couple of hundreds. He was really helpful.
As I was checking out the last cart, a frantic call came over the loudspeaker.
“Code Blue to ladies wear! Code Blue Ladies Wear!”
I looked quizzically over at the helper dude, Stan.
“Medical,” he explained. “Usually means some old lady fell. But could be a heart attack or stroke. We get those sometimes. I gotta go check it out.”
I paid the clerk. We heard screams coming from close by. Coming from the ladies clothing section. Two women staggered out from the racks, large wounds on their arms. Kinda looked like bites.
Time to go.
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Chapter 2 – The Rescue
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I got the hell out of Dodge, err, Phoenix. When the shit hits the fan, you want to be first out or you’ll be stuck in traffic jams forever. Fortunately, it was about 4 am Sunday morning so the roads were basically empty. I began coaxing my heavily laden Jeep up the 5,500 foot climb on I-17 to Flagstaff.
Talked to my buddies on the cell, they were all making their way to the cabin with their wives. Claire called, she sounded panicky. She apologized, and could I please take her to the cabin? I told her to go to the Walmart I was just at and buy a gun and some ammo. She told me to fuck off. I told her to suck a dick until it cums.
Called my parents. They didn’t believe me about anything. Dad did check that the door was locked. Sigh. I’d set them up with as much stuff as I could, but you can only do so much for people. They didn’t want to come over from Vegas. They do have a shotgun, water barrels, MREs… should last them a couple months.
Went up to Flagstaff and turned east on 40, could see some fires burning in the little city. Went 50 some-odd miles outside of town, then found a side road to hide and take a rest.
Many hours later, I finally made it back to the cabin. Had lots of excitement, though. Ran over 10-12 zombies. Shot a few more. Saved a few lives, for the time being, at least. Lesson for the future, firing your gun INSIDE a car is hazardous to your hearing! The movies don’t prepare you for how loud that can be!
The little town just below our compound in the hills seems to be okay. The news is reporting instances of terrorism on a large scale. No mention of zombies, though. Wow. Thanks for the fair and balanced reporting. Don’t want people to know what’s really happening. The websites are going crazy though. Youtube has footage up that is shocking.
David stopped answering his cell phone. So did Chris and Steven. Maybe the cells went down due to power outages? They are far too smart to get caught up in this crap. I hope. But then, I drove out of only one actual city. They’ve got scores of cities to get through.
I swept the area, all clear. Then I started unloading the trailer and Jeep, and got down to the business of survival.
Two more days went by before the first zombie showed up in town. At least, that’s what I figured. I could hear the gunfire, and could see cars speeding about the place. Mayhem. I considered going down to help, but, what can one man do? There were hundreds of them. Plus, I didn’t really know the layout well, would probably just get myself killed. Ah, who am I kidding. I was just being a pussy.
I re-considered on the third day.
Now, my Jeep Wrangler already proved to be a pretty good zombie-striker. It’s lifted and sitting on 37″ offroad tires, M/T’s with serious knobby tread. It’s the 4-door model outfitted with extra gas tanks, 5.13 gears, offroad lights and whatnot, it’s pretty heavy. And it has a big ass bumper in the front which proved great at knocking over Zed and his Zed friends. But for real survival, I’ve got the Unimog. It’s built about 4 times stronger than the Jeep, has higher ground clearance, has four doors and a camper box on the back-end. They were originally made as a German army-type vehicle, then they became available to the public. This one was originally a command and communications truck. We rigged it up as an emergency truck with a ladder, medical gear, fire extinguishers, gun racks, everything we could think of.
I put on my camo gear. Then I put on Chris’s dirtbike gear. It has hard plastic pieces that cover the chest and back, forearms, elbows, upper arms. I figured it would be harder to get bitten that way. Put on my chest rig which held my 1911 and 6 magazines for that. It also held 8 mags for my AR, 30-rounders. Pulled on my steel toed boots, shin guards, knee pads, and a dirtbike helmet and goggles. I’ve also got these Kevlar gloves that are supposed to be knife-proof, I hoped they were teeth-proof. I looked like a confused army man, nothing really matched but what the hell. I don’t need to be camouflaged from Zed, just need to be hard to eat. Grabbed my shotgun, AR, and a suppressed .22 caliber rifle.
Got in the Mog and drove to town.
Much of the town was quiet, I turned down onto the deserted main street and kept a look out. In my mirrors I could see a strange site; zombies exiting stores and turning to follow my truck. Was everybody dead?
Suddenly, shots rang out and my blessed Unimog was hit! The shots came from an upstairs window of a house. I returned fire (had my helmet on to protect my hearing this time!) and stomped on the gas. The Mog, rather reluctantly, responded and I turned off to a side street. I zigged and zagged a bit and lost my zombies that were trailing me. I stopped the truck and took off my helmet.
It was quiet. Too quiet for the Zombie Apocalypse.
A Zed rounded the corner and shuffled towards me. I mean, I think he was a Zed. Blood covered face and chest, blank stare… I grabbed the suppressed .22 and fired at his head. Two shots and he dropped, but not before he let out the moan.
The zombie moan. We learned to hate and fear that sound. The moan seemed to be a “Hey Zombie friends, there’s meat over here!” kind of a thing. I knew more were coming soon. I heard some more zombie moans behind me.
Time to go. I got back in the cab and was ready to turn the key when I heard several female screams from a nearby house. Shit. That’s also the direction where the moans came from.
I took the keys (didn’t want to leave them in the ignition and have some live asshole take off in it), put my helmet back on, grabbed my bigger AR-15 rifle, and trotted to the house to investigate.
As I climbed the steps up the porch, I could see many Zeds milling about inside, trying to get up the stairs where the screams were coming from. I took aim and started shooting. Headshots only, you know. Which isn’t that easy considering a head isn’t very big and they are moving, not holding still. So it took me a shot and sometimes two or three to kill one. But the AR is semi-automatic, meaning all I have to do is pull the trigger for each bullet, so I can shoot pretty fast. Full auto would’ve been nice… shoulda got that instead but that’s illegal in Colorado. Thanks, politicians.
As the zombies started dropping, the still living ones… or… still undead ones, turned and saw me and came my direction. The moans increased, calling their friends.
My first magazine emptied, I flipped it over and stuck in the second one I had taped to it. Firing steadily, I killed them and the ones on the stairs. I then tried climbing the stairs, but it was full of blood and gore and really dead zombies. The screams continued upstairs, but I couldn’t get there. I could hear some moans up there, though.
Shit! Some zombie motherfucker grabbed my leg! I fell backwards but landed on a couch. The offending Zed reached out from beneath a pile of dead Zeds. The female screams continued upstairs, I figured I could kill this fallen one later.
I ran back outside, started the Mog and backed her right up to the house, destroying the picket fence and garden in the process. But now the top of the rear camper box was pretty much in line with the porch roof, which led to the second story windows. Climbed up the hood, onto the cab, onto the box, up the porch covering, and I landed in the upstairs hallway.
The zeds up here saw me, turned and moaned, and died again in a hail of 5.56 mm bullets. The screams continued in a bedroom. I turned in to see a gal and a woman trying to hold off two zombies with chairs. A bunch of people were backed up in the corners of the room. They weren’t going to last much longer. I reached over my shoulder and pulled out my Crovel, a small but heavy duty combination tool of crow-bar and shovel. The shovel edges are sharpened to act like an axe. It also has a saw edge and a bottle opener, so it’s pretty cool. I hooked one Zed with the crowbar end and pulled him off the young girl.
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