About a Woman, a Zombie Chronicles Novel

an accident victim anymore, just a local yahoo out for a stroll.

There was nothing else Dora needed out of the wreck, so she picked up her purse and turned back to the road. She could still not see any cars or people, she was in a bit of a valley here and she expected to have a better view when she reached the top of the hillside at the end of the street. There were three very large houses along each side of the street on the way up, but they all looked empty.

'Another sign of the recovering economy' Dora thought, which brought her a snort of derision, 'sure we've recovered from the recession.' The house whose fence she had run over also appeared abandoned, Dora almost approached it, just to see if anyone was home. She took a step towards the house and she immediately changed her mind, the place was old and creepy, no one lived there, she was sure. Ignoring the freshly cut grass which contradicted her logic, Dora backed out of the yard and started walking for home.

Chapter 4

The first quarter mile walk went smoothly for Dora, she walked up the sidewalk until she was back at the cross street, which was fourteenth, in less than five minutes. She crossed the empty intersection with its flashing red lights and was about to continue down Uclid when she heard the noise. Fireworks? No it sounded like an action movie, those were gunshots!

'Close by too!' Dora looked for a place to hide. While Uclid was primarily a residential street, fourteenth ran through the main business district of this section of suburbia, so there was a gas station across from a fast food place diagonally and the opposite corners boasted a dry cleaning place across from a closed Chinese restaurant. The fast food place was right ahead of her so Dora crouched down and ran towards that, feeling a twinge in her neck with every step. She half expected the door to be locked when she pushed on it, but it slid open easily beneath her hands. The cool air that blew into her face was a welcome relief from the humid air of the street.

Standing in the entry way between two glass doors Dora peered into the place. Outside the gunfire intensified, seeing nothing unusual inside she pushed into the main lobby and approached the lone teenage boy behind the counter. He ducked visibly as the next round of muffled gunfire went off unseen outside, then nervously asked, 'What is going on outside? That sounds like gunfire.'

'Ya think' Dora responded sarcastically, 'Maybe we oughta get in the back and hide somewhere?'

The boy nodded and Dora came around the counter quickly, almost running into a portly, younger woman with short, curly black hair wearing a fast food uniform and an assistant manager's badge with the name 'Paige Hindale' on it. The woman's face held a worried expression on it and she quickly motioned to Dora and yelled, 'C'mon Mike, we gotta get out of here!'

As she said this one of the front windows was shattered and all three of them dropped to the floor. Mike was wearing a head set to take orders from the drive through and it got caught up on a the cash register when he turned to run. He started swearing as the cord between the battery pack on his belt and the headphones he was wearing pulled tight around his neck, almost strangling him. Paige's expression was one mixed with fear and concern, Dora's was more of one that said 'what a clumsy dumbass'.

Mike pulled the corded headphones off, unplugged them from his belt and crawled towards the end of the counter where the two women were. Paige led the way as they crawled deeper into the building, eventually they ended up in front of a locked door. The industrial metal portal had a narrow rectangle of frosted safety glass from above the door knob that extended about two feet high. Opening it Paige revealed a messy office area that smelled strongly of old grease and stale bread.

The radio and small flat panel tv on the desk were barely visible beneath coffee stained papers and mantilla folders. Behind the desk, braced against the wall was a rickety looking bookshelf made of white medium density fiber board held up with braces and overloaded with training manuals, employee binders, old computer software and other paraphernalia. The users of this wonder of engineering must have realized the potential death trap they had sitting behind them when they used the desk, because the free floating corner of the shelves was braced up with a large post, screwed into the shelves with amateurish skill. The smells made Dora want to puke, reminding her briefly of her original reason for leaving the house this morning. Paige had immediately shut and locked the door behind them when they entered. Still on the ground, she eyed Dora speculatively before saying, 'Welcome to our restaurant, can I take your order please?'

Mike started laughing at that and Dora gave them both a look of scorn, assuming, correctly, they were playing a bit of a joke on her. The moment quickly passed and she said, 'I want a number 3 with a large black cup of Joe please, two creams and two splendas.'

Paige scowled, 'A large cup of 'Joe', that's our competitor you know.'

Dora nodded, 'Yeah, I know.'

'A wise ass, eh? I outta toss you out on your ass.'

Dora nodded, 'Yeah, I know.'

'I won't.'

'Yeah. I didn't think you would.'

Holding her hand out, Paige said, 'I am Paige, that's Mike.'

Shaking her hand Dora said, 'Dora, I am very pleased to meet you.'

'Is it bad out there? It has been dead in here all morning, no morning rush, no old people coming in to nurse their coffees for two hours. What is going on?'

Dora, who thought she was the last one who knew what was going on, said, 'I was talking to the police they said to go home, lock my doors and not to talk to anyone.'

'So what are you doing here?' Mike asked.

'I was trying to get home, I crashed into…well I hit a tree and they told me to walk home.' Dora left the part out about the bag lady.

'Anyway, I don't really know much more than that, the cops told me to turn on the news, get an update that way.' Dora shrugged her shoulders, then winced in pain at the effort.

Paige lifted one hand and brushed back a lock of her curly hair, 'Yeah, watch TV, huh. You would know our cable went out in this place two days ago, we've missed most of the crazy stuff going on in the world the last couple of days. Then the manager is off in Vegas, so all the assistants are in charge, rotating the schedules, a major pain in the ass, I've been working 12 hour days the last three days, poor Mike has too. Only there was no business today, nothing.'

'No cable, but does that thing work?' Dora asked while pointing at the half visible tv on the top of the desk.

It was Paige's turn to shrug, 'Sure, I think so. But it doesn't have cable. The radio works too, let's try both and see what we can get.' Paige grabbed the small television, while Mike unwound the plugs from both appliances from the jumble of cords under the desk. Dora made herself useful by tilting the radio off the desktop into her hand and then piling the loads of folders back into a stabilized pile that wouldn't fall on them. After a few confusing minutes of running the cords around and getting the television into a position where they could all see it on the floor they turned it on. It warmed up slowly, but the volume came on right away.

'…story by telling anyone who can hear this to look out for anyone acting strange. This could be your neighbor or spouse or even your children. Many of these people affected by the virus appear to have sustained fatal or near fatal wounds, the rule of thumb is if they look hurt and still come at you, you need to flee to a safer area.'

A woman's voice came on, 'Now, Jim is this the same thing that hit so hard on the east coast, with an outbreak in Denver?'

'Absolutely, Diane. The authorities are saying that we are going to have to form militias to deal with the problem, Kansas will not sit idle and let the contamination overwhelm us like what has happened elsewhere. As you heard the governor state just a few minutes ago, the National Guard has been called up and every available