The Apocalypse: A Zombie Tragedy
Intro
I always said to myself, if there was ever a zombie invasion, take ten thinks with you and bail. I even had a list of the ten things I would take, strategically written and thought out. The first item was car keys. I always thought I'd have the advantage of taking my mothers Gmc Yukon, but weeks before the outbreak, she sold it for a compact Volvo. Now, some people might think a better gas mileage car is important, but I wanted the Yukon to keep me safe. It would act like body armor and a ramming tool. The second item on the list was just as simple. Weapons to fight back. The chain saw in the garage, all the knives in the draws, and so forth. You always see the heros in the movie fighting with knives and high powered weapons like assault rifles and the such. But in my home, the best we had was that chain saw. Third, a supply of non perishable food. Canned fruits, precooked soups and the such, in order to eat and survive. Fourth, water, as humans can only go so long without. Fifth, starting to get into the more human items, clothing. Sixth, a sleeping bag. Seventh, money. This being almost as important as food. Gas even in an invasion doesn't come free. Eighth, the generator in the backyard for power. Lastly, a laptop to access the Internet and communicate with other survivors.
Now, the problem with this, was that in all the movies, the zombies took time to spread. Even in a single city, it was supposed to start slowly. Sadly, this is not the case. They came fast. Apparently, HP doesn't just work with computers. They work with bio hazard research as consultants. Hidden under the building, a series of major safes contained old virus and bacterial samples from a company they were assisting, and when I say old, I mean before the beginning of the Italian cosa Nostra. Turns out, they had been the first group to fight zombies. They have been around longer then we thought, and longer then we dreamed. Most of the myths had some basis, though with small communities small and far between, outbreaks had little effect, as food sources were far spread, and the zombies like humans, can only survive so long without food. If you've ever heard of a settlement in early America, where everyone disappeared and the word Croatian was carved into a tree, you've read of a zombie outbreak.
Back to the outbreak though...the company had left these down below a long time, not knowing what they were capable of, and allowed the bacteria to mix into a lethal combination of pain killers and psychopathic rage inducing sickness. Zombies aren't the un-dead really, just crazed humans that feel no pain and have an extinction date. 300 days til the sickness kills them, til they run out of food, or til someone puts a bullet through their head. On the day of the first response, a employee went down to the vaults to receive a sample for the employer and on the way up, dropped a sample. He hid it, thinking it was nothing, and since it hadn't cut him, he survived. Til later at least. A man came along later and reached into the bag, looking for a discarded pile of papers, and cut his finger on the broken glass, and the bacterial agent entered his blood stream. The small cut was not uncommon at the facility, so he simply went to the nurse and got it fixed up with a band-aid. Later, he coughed on the lunch bar, spreading the bacteria into the food, and boom. A vat of bacterial agent, which in turn got eaten by the other employees. By the end of the day, most of the employees had contacted the disease, and brought it home to their families. As we have learned, no effects show for the first 24 hours. So by the next day, almost every home that had employee had become a victim. After that, the children went to school and spread it there. By the middle of the day, the outbreak had started, and things went to hell in seconds. Thankfully for me, though my father had been infected, as well as my family, I was safe, as I had spent the night across the street with my friend A. while we were cramming in rounds of Call of Duty before the next quarter of school started.
And this brings us back to the list...when we heard the news that people were getting attacked all over, and whole schools were becoming bloodbaths, we didn't believe it. We had laughed about what we'd do, but we always thought it was a myth, just like everyone else. Moments later, his mother came in with a chunk missing from her arm, and we knew it was real. We ran and grabbed whatever we could get our hands...most of it not even on the lists...and by the time we peeled out in his Mazda 3, this is what we had.
1) Mazda 3 (no body armor)
2) A butcher knife and cooking knife (not to bad...)
3) A container of car repair tools (surprisingly good weapons)
4) The clothes on our backs
5) The stuffed dolphin from my room (I'd never leave him to zombies)
6) The money we had in our wallets and the cell phones from our pockets and the iPods that were there as well.
So how did we fair, A. and I...who knows yet. We are still driving down the freeway listening to the terror spreading behind us almost as fast as we drive...it's already spread into the three surrounding cities...I'll write again when my hands stop shaking...if I'm still alive.
D.