If civilization had lasted long enough to keep a record of what was going on, they would have most likely listed the time when the infection spread into the San Fernando Valley as 6:30 pm. Completely and blissfully unaware of what was happening, husbands; wives, daughters and sons returned home, or were at home or on the street or attacked in their cars by the groaning bloodthirsty cannibal shells of flesh they called their loved ones. (The really unlucky ones were torn limb from limb by complete strangers.)
So this is where it ends, huh? Thought 40 year old Candice Ray, housewife, mother of two and former soccer player as she piled groceries into the back of her black Ford Suburban. Throwing groceries in the back of my SUV with my two crazy kids and heading back home to my asshole adulterous corrupt lawyer of a husband. She thought of her husband, who was four years her elder and thought that he had playing Candice into thinking that he was faithful and never fooled around with his desk clerks at the office. He's so great looking and he has such natural charm. Money and charisma too. Huh. He must be bored with me if he's fucking everything that moves like this. She glanced over to her kids, aged thirteen and eleven. Assholes, both of them.
The sixteen year old had been nothing but a pain in the ass for most of his life. Anger management, bad grades in school, and all day today he'd been bitching and insisting that the entire family go home and 'fortify" to guard against the rioters inDowntown. She thought that he had heard from his schoolmates that the rioters were crossing over to the Valley and now he was trying to just get attention from her to listen to him.
Candice set the last bag down in the seat. Inside laid a jug of milk and some hamburger meat. She noticed that the hamburger meat was laying directly in a ray of heated sunlight beaming through the window of the Suburban. That's not good. If I leave it in the sunlight it'll get all yucky and stuff. With the dedication of an obsessive compulsive, she set the bag aside into a shaded corner of the backseat, along with her purse. Done with her task, she closed the back of the Suburban and yelled to her kids to cease playing in the lot.
Candice heard a scream from the sidewalk next to the parking lot and she looked over at the commotion.
The people around her seemed to be panicked. Along the sidewalk, she heard yelps and the rapid footsteps of people running. She glanced to them, watching them from behind her sunglasses. She heard one man yell "That guy just killed my wife!" pointing behind him to a drunk-looking older man with what looked like fresh blood running down his chin. Behind that man were about fifteen others in about the same condition.
Candice just gazed at the crowd and took off her sunglasses for the last time. The harsh evening sunlight made her squint, but her vision was good enough to see that the crowd was entering the parking lot. Maybe they're all just coming in here to wash off. She felt a tug at her shirt. She looked down and saw her sixteen year old looking her straight in the eye and completely serious.
"Mom. We need to go. Now."
The eleven year old just watched the crowd, now only ten feet away.
"Mom, we need to leave. Don't go over there."
Against all better judgment, Candice walked over to the crowd and patted one of them on the shoulder, an old lady who looked like she had been dead for ten years.
"Are you okay? Do you want me to call an ambulance?" The old lady just gazed at Candice and with an air of concentration, swatted her in the eye and bit into a major artery in her neck. Blood sprayed from Candice's neck grotesquely and drenched the surroundings. Candice collapsed to the ground and looked up at the crowd which was now surrounding her. Before the last three entered the circle, Candice heard a car door slam and an engine start. She saw her Suburban driving away at top speed. Fucking Brian! Leaving me here to die like this… She saw faces. They were human but it seemed like everything good and wholesome about them were gone and replaced with a malevolent, demonic look. The old lady was first to grab at Candice's brown dress and rip it off, then tugging at the flesh on her chest intending to rip it out and feast on it. Candice spat at the woman's face and yelled her final words as loud as she could.
"I WAS ONLY TRYING TO HELP YOU, YOU STUPID BITCH!"
Thankfully, Brian and Liz Ray weren't around to witness their mother's death. They had already agreed that it was her own fault. In fact, they didn't really care that their mom was dead. They would always remember her as the source of the dysfunction in their family. Their father, Dennis Ray, whom they were on the way to pick up from their modest suburban Sherman Oaks home, did nothing but try and help Candice try and let go of her anger and arrogance resulting from her abusive childhood, even paying in excess of $2000 a month for her therapy and psychiatric treatment.
Brian breezed through the stoplights, skillfully swerving past crashed cars and the walking dead alike. Ventura Boulevard was a disaster zone. Fires burned unopposed and thick, black smoke made it seem like it was already nighttime when it wasn't. The Boulevard's famous shops and restaurants were completely devoid of the living, and windows were broken and broken glass and worthless trinkets littered the streets. Past Van Nuys and Ventura, bodies lay crumpled and broken everywhere. They wore blue jeans and white t-shirts and had red headbands wrapped around their foreheads. Next to each body an AK-47 assault rifle laid next to them. Around them, the dead just stood, staring into the distance waiting for more victims. It was obvious that the massacre had occurred recently and the bodies were that of local Mexican gang members, apparently trying to make a last stand against the dead. Brian stopped the car thirty feet from the scene and considered the situation.
"Why'd we stop?" asked Liz.
"Liz, I gotta get out for a minute."
"Why?"
"I need to go get a gun."
"Daddy has a gun."
"Yes, but those guns laying on the street are better than Dad's gun. I'll be back in less than five minutes, I swear."
"What if one of those things show up?"
"Just hide and stay quiet. I'll be back for you."
Brian exited the Suburban, taking his mom's gym bag out of the back and jumping out of the driver's side and running down the street. He moved quickly, his tall runner's frame carrying him quickly. He'd seen how those things moved. If he just kept ahead of them, he should be able to outrun them. Before he got any closer, Brian stopped and unzipped the gym bag. He discarded some items, sweatpants, women's t-shirts and anything else he could part with. Now, the bag would be able to hold more than three of the AK-47s. He swung the bag over his shoulder and continued running until he reached the first of the bodies. He scooped up the AK, putting it in the bag quickly. The zombies hadn't noticed him yet. On a whim, he searched the pockets of the dead gang member, finding a cheap brown four inch folding knife. He pocketed the knife and proceeded to the next body, taking another AK and putting it in the bag.
Now, the cannibals noticed him. The three undead let out an elated groan and slowly lurched towards Brian, arms outstretched. Brian ran to the next two bodies, repeating the process of taking the guns and searching the pockets. This time, Brian got lucky. These gangsters both had two spare clips as well as a box of sixty bullets each. By this time, the cannibals had found some friends and were now walking towards brian with a hungry gleam in their eyes. Brian quickly ran from them and went back the way he came, smiling a little because he now had a fighting chance.
A running Ford Suburban. Nice. Thought criminal street thug Robert Brown as he walked up to the SUV, looking in the windows to see if anyone was inside. Clear enough, he thought as he tried opening the driver's door. He was disappointed when he found it was locked. He reached in his backpack and pulled out a nightstick that he had taken off a dead cop and pulled his arm back, ready to smash the window.
Liz tried not to look at the face of the man who was about to smash open the window, instead closing her eyes tightly and trying to believe that this was all a dream. Brian…where are you?
When Brian saw the man outside the car, he went apeshit and took an AK out of the bag. Without even thinking, he yanked back the action on the side of the gun and trained the sights on the man's back.
"Get away from the car, asshole!" he yelled.
Robert turned around and saw a fourteen year old with an AK-47 aimed at him. He smiled.
"You're not going to shoot me!"
"What makes you think I won't?" Brian responded.
"You're just a kid! You've never killed anyone!"
"Get the fuck away from the car and I'll let you live."
"I'm takin' this shit." Robert said arrogantly and he calmly tried opening the passenger side door in the back.
Brian calmly let loose a three-round burst into Robert's chest, all three rounds making clean big holes along his breastplate. He staggered back, his head hitting the glass along the door. Then, he fell on his chin onto the pavement below. Brian then went to the driver's door and took out the keys and unlocked the car. He was about to get in when Robert yelled again. "Wait! Come here!" Brian sighed and got out again, walking to the fallen street criminal.
"What do you want?"
Robert coughed up blood and spat onto the pavement.
"Shoot me."
"Why? You're already going to die."
"Shoot me in the head so I won't come back as one of them."
"I thought you had to get bit to become one of them."
"No, it's in us all. When you die naturally, you come back. If you get bit, you become one of them quickly."
"How do you know all this?"
Robert coughed.
"I seen it. My grandpa got sick last week and died in his sleep last night. When we went to his room this morning to check on him, he was one of them. Then, he bit my grandma. She turned an hour later. It has to do with how much of whatever makes you into one of them is in you at a time. Gettin' bit shoots you up with so much of it your body can't handle it and you die right then, then come back. But if you die naturally, like my grandpa did, you come back later. So I think it's in us all, just waiting til we die so it can take over."
"I see." Brian nodded.
"Will you shoot me now?" asked Robert solemnly.
Liz watched the situation from the backseat. She looked away for a second and then saw four undead approaching the car. She frantically banged at the window and got the attention of her brother.
"What's happening?" Brian asked Liz.
"THERE'S FOUR OF THEM BEHIND YOU!"
Brian looked behind him and saw the cannibals not less than seven feet from them. He raised his AK and opened fire, tearing off a large chunk off two of their shoulders. They still kept coming.
"Shoot them in the head! Shoot them in the head!", Robert shouted.
Brian took his advice and adjusted his aim, putting three bullets in the nearest cannibal's head. It exploded and the cannibal collapsed to the ground. Brian repeated this for the last three, killing them instantly. Finally, the threat was gone and blood and bone soaked the pavement. Brian ejected the clip of the AK and checked how many bullets he had left. 10. Gonna have to conserve these.
Brian looked back at Robert.
"So you still want me to kill you?"
Robert's breathing was shallow and his face was pale. He was dying of blood loss. It wouldn't be long now.
"You might as well. I'll die either way."
Brian smiled and outstretched his hand. Robert took it, shaking Brian's out of mutual respect.
"Sorry I shot you, man."
"Sorry I thought you were some punk white bitch who thought he could handle an AK. Maybe in the next life I'll be a little more kind."
Brian turned to the window, where Liz was watching and told her to close her eyes.
Brian looked back to Robert, breathed deeply and put the muzzle of the AK against Robert's temple. He looked away as he pulled the trigger.
When Liz opened her eyes again, she saw Brian in the driver's seat again. He placed the gear in Drive and then proceeded down Ventura once again, heading to their house. Finally, Brian got off Ventura and drove into the suburbs.
You couldn't say that the events taking place were that different then what was happening in every other major city in the United States, but with carnage and mayhem on this sort of scale now commonplace in such peaceful (sic) places like the quiet, tree-lined sidewalks of the San Fernando Valley, you had to expect that these formerly docile city-dwellers would react to the situation in some interesting ways. Brian switched gears as he drove up the hill to his home. He used what little sunlight there was left to confirm that yes, his father's late-model Cadillac Escalade was parked and a light was on upstairs. Before parking, he looked at his neighbor's house. No lights were on and the driveway was empty. He thought briefly of the former occupants, two elderly Jews and their Great Dane. He wondered if they had survived the first hours of the undead rampage. I wish the best for everyone but I don't think Mr. and Mrs. Gold made it to the freeway. He turned to his sister in the backseat and told her to come with him inside. Quickly, he turned the car off and picked up the gym bag, jumping out of the car and locking it behind him. Together, Brian and Liz ran to the door and banged on it loudly. The door opened and with a look of surprise on his face, Mr. Edward Ray looked down and saw his two kids alive and well. Not what he'd been expecting.
"Glad to see you made it." He said confidentely as he led his kids inside the sprawling two story home with a large pool, big living room and fireplace and Jacuzzi. Mr. Ray locked the door behind him and slipped the deadbolt in place.
"Where's your mother?" he asked.
Brian sat down on the couch and looked at his father, putting the gym bag by his side as he did.
"She didn't make it.", he said as calmly as he could.
"Oh.", Edward replied sadly , looking out the window as he did. By the fireplace, his daughter just stared at him as if waiting for him to tell her what to do.
"Liz! How are you doing today, sweetie?", he exclaimed, rushing over to her and giving her a hug and a kiss on the head as he did. "Why don't you go to your room and pack your things in case we have to leave quick. Don't pack too much though, you gotta be able to move around quickly."
"Okay, Dad.", Liz replied blankly. She went to her room and shut the door.
Edward went to the kitchen and opened the liquor cabinet door, taking out a bottle of Crown Royal and two large glasses. He went to the refridgerator and placed the cups directly underneath the ice dispenser.
"It's a miracle the electricity's still working.", he remarked.
"For now.", Brian replied.
"You guys went to the grocery store before you came home, didn't you?"
"Yeah."
"You might want to go get that out of the car before it goes rotten. We might need to live on that for a few days."
"Can I have a drink first?"
"Of course, son, what do you think I'm doing?", Edward said with a laugh as he poured the whisky into the glasses and walked across the cream-colored carpet to the couch. He sat next to his son and placed his son's glass in front of him, sipping at his own as he did.
Brian drank a little, the alcohol calming him and letting him take a more objective look of the situation. The recently deceased had come back to life and began to kill the living. Those that the dead killed also rose within a day. They could only be killed by a lethal blow to the head. Life had now become a game of survival.
"What do you have in that bag there?", Edward asked.
Brian smiled to his dad and unzipped the bag and took out two of the AK-47s, placing one on the glass table in front of him.
"Impressive.", Edward said as he picked up one of the rifles, peering down the sights and checking out the mechanics of the gun. "You'd make it out there with one of these. You don't need to clean these that often." He stood up and raised the AK like he was going to fire it, aiming it down the hall. "Accurate, too. You could just kick back on the roof with one of these and pick off those pus-bags when they come walking up our street."
Brian laughed loudly at his father's humor. He felt better now thanks to the whisky and the fact that he now stood at an advantage against the things that walked outside his door, waiting to make him into a meal.
"You should've seen it earlier, Dad. Ventura was a complete mess. There must've been hundreds of 'em back there."
"Downtown was worse."
Edward placed the AK on the table again and laid his head back against the couch.
"Those things just fucked everything up down there. When I went to work this morning, my boss tore out my secretary's throat with his teeth. Then, she got up five minutes later and killed half the office. I got out of there pretty quick."
"I heard they killed a bunch of cops near Beverely Hills.", Brian said absently.
"Yeah. That's how they spread the infection to the Valley. About ten thousand of those fuckers here came from West L.A. All that they had to do was tear through the five hundred cops guarding the shortcut into the Valley and then walk two miles and start killing people on Ventura Boulevard." Edward laughed out loud and looked at his son.
"We're all victims of incompetence and conspiracy."
"What are you trying to say?", Brian asked, now sitting upright and listening to his father intently.
"I'm saying that what's happening here has a reason and a source. I think that it's manmade. Think about it. People all over the city started getting sick about two weeks ago. Now, seven days later all those poor bastards are dead. Then, these assholes come back to life soon after they die and immediately search out other people. Living people. Then, they kill them and they go out and do the same thing. Everyone else panics and tries to leave town or pick up a weapon and try and fight. So now no one's going to work or buying anything anymore. Our economy is destroyed. Everyone's either indoors hiding out or dead. It's the perfect way to disrupt society. And plus, we're the only country infected in the world right now." Edward paused for a second to sip on his whisky, Brian responding in kind.
"I think it's the Chinese. They own us. Hell, they manufacture everything that's sold in our stores. They own a bunch of factories and businesses and shit like that down here, why couldn't they put this disease in our water and thin out our numbers so they can just come in here and take us over?"
Brian nodded and listened to his dad's belief of what was going on. He didn't really care for explanations. All he wanted was just to have stability and the assurance that the things he once called people stayed away from him. So, Brian told his dad that.
"Dad, we can't worry about what caused this right now. We should be making sure those assholes don't get to us. We should make sure no one tries and jack our supplies. We should just be planning for survival."
"I know that, Brian. Why do you think I came home today? I didn't go out and hop on the freeway north or run to the desert like everyone else did. Everyone who did that is one of them now. I did what the logical thing is. I'm going to wait this out and wait for it to solve itself."
Those words were the most reasonable, most logical words Brian had heard all day. Fighting the dead was impossible because there were too many of them and only so many bullets. Running when possible was always fine, but when one had shelter and supplies to last awhile, like he had now, all he really had to do was just stay quiet and not move around a lot. But still, he had his concerns.
"What do we do if they get in here?"
"We take everything we can and run. The Escalade is fully gassed up and I have big tank of the juice in the back. We can live out of the Escalade on the road if we need to."
"How many weapons do we have?"
"We have my Springfield and three boxes of ammo, my .45 and your AKs."
"We have a lot of food and a generator."
"We're gonna have to go out and get that when we're done talking.", Ed added.
"No, really?"
"The only thing I'm really concerned about is looters. Other people are alive out there and we have some really nice stuff that they could take. Useful stuff."
"We should move the Suburban into the house."
"No, not now, it'll be too much noise. We'll move it in the morning. We do need that food now, though."
"We need to kill the garage door's connection to the electricity and make it openable by hand."
Edward nodded in agreement.
"Alright, enough talking. I'm gonna upstairs, change my clothes and see how many of them are on our block. We need to go get the food out of the Suburban and make sure we stay alive doing it. Get ready to work."
"Okay, Dad." said Brian.
It was dark when Edward and Brian went out to the driveway. Both men were dressed for battle. Edward wore his old army fatigues and helmet from when he was in Iraq for Gulf War One. Brian wore his paintball gear and a paintball mask. Edward carried his AK-47 on a sling and wore his .45 on his ankle. Brian only carried his AK on a sling. They had agreed to do this wordlessly and as silently as possible before they exited the house. Edward had counted ten of the infected wandering the block, five of which within a short run from the house. While Edward covered him, Brian took bags of food from the back of the suburban and ran into the now-opened garage with bags of food.
About twenty-five feet down the block, an infected person heard the click of the back opening and began stumbling towards the driveway. Ed tapped Brian on the shoulder to encourage him to move faster. Brian grabbed bags of food and ran in and out of the house as fast as he could. He tried to ignore the moans of the zombie as he performed his task.
Edward had made an agreement with Brian beforehand not to shoot unless he absouletly had to. The undead person walking towards the driveway now had a few buddies, a balding middle-aged man with a big beer belly. They both walked with their arms outstretched and their tongues hanging out like dogs ready to eat. Edward raised his AK-47 and pointed it at the zombies. They were less than ten feet away and gaining with each second that went by. Now, it had been a full minute since they went outside. He glanced to the back of the Suburban. Brian had just delivered a load to the garage and was rushing back to the car to grab four other bags. Edward shot a menancing glance to Brian to hurry up and pointed at the zombies that were approaching closer and closer with each second that went by.
Suddenly, Brian felt a surge of energy go through his body. With strength uncanny for the skinny, slender body that he had, he grabbed the last four heavy bags of food from the car and sprinted to the garage and placed the food down. With less than seven feet away from him and the cannibals, Edward slammed the back lid of the Suburban shut and ran into the garage, already closing. He and Brian aimed at the cannibals as the garage door closed, praying that they wouldn't be fast enough to walk in while it shut.
The garage door closed and Brian and Edward were alone again. They had completed the first major mission for their suburban safehouse. Fortunately, the cannibals outside had no clue where those tasty big pieces of flesh disappeared to and walked away from the house to go do something else. Now, Brian and Edward faced another daunting task. Putting away groceries without the help of Mrs. Ray! Tired and not caring about Candice's former rules of grocery storage (Put the bread in the bread basket, sandwich meat in the meat tray, lettuce on the bottom of the fridge, etc), they just put the food anywhere cold and drank the remainder of their whiskey and fell asleep in their own beds.
(Stay tuned for the next chapter. Lots of action and bloodshed on the beach!)