So, the shotgun was the perfect self-defense weapon.
Anyone who trespassed on Vin’s property would not live to see the inside of his house.
He was married to his guns, although he had a girlfriend. They weren’t serious, him and his girlfriend, and they both fucked other people. He didn’t particularly like her screwing around on him, but such were the times. Living in a snowflake area meant he couldn’t control women the way his father had. On the other hand, he could spread his buckshot all over the county.
He hoped he had no children he didn’t know about. He didn’t want any children in his life, and as an only child, he had no nieces or nephews, which was just fine with him.
Two and a half hours into his drive, traffic came to a standstill three miles south of Beaver Park. Several minutes later, with still no signs of movement of vehicles, he glanced at his watch. Every two minutes or so, he looked again. When it progressed to ten minutes, he started to get pissed. Where was a cop directing his line of traffic into the other lane? Then he realized he hadn’t noticed a single car coming the other way. Both lanes of traffic were stopped. Lovely.
Chapter Five
Day Zero
Jize Chen pumped gas. His hands were insured for ten million dollars—and he pumped gas. He always worried about his hands when he performed even the smallest of tasks. What if he pinched a finger? How many concerts would he miss before he healed? And what if—God forbid—he broke one getting it caught in a door?
But he didn’t want to appear like a prima donna in front of his grandchildren. A passenger’s proper role is to pump gas. He preferred to pay cash for gas rather than use his credit card, preferring to conduct his transactions in person. Buying gas without interacting with a person seemed wrong. He took every opportunity to interact with what others that possessed his kind of money would call “common people.” Hmm. Might as well call them “peasants,” which would be a more honest description of their feelings. As long as it wasn’t a high-crime area, Jize enjoyed interacting with those less wealthy. So they didn’t have his gift, so what? He himself came from modest means, almost poverty. That they had less wealth than him was as it should be, considering, but it didn’t make them any less worthy of interaction. He drew the line at the risk of crime though, and at those unpleasant because of mental imbalance. To him, a cashier at a gas station was as entitled to a polite exchange of words as someone who paid five hundred dollars to see him in concert. Of course, he was so talented he didn’t need to worry about networking with the wealthy and connected. So what harm was there in talking with someone who worked for a living? Besides, he loved the feel of money, whether crisp or wrinkled and worn. He cherished the smell of U.S. greenbacks.
Jize went into the convenience store to pay, and recognition flashed in the cashier’s eyes. A fan, and a cashier no less! Pleased, he hoped she had the wherewithal to attend one of his performances, at least from the cheap seats. She appeared to be early fifties, white, with straight dirty-dish blonde hair, and thin. He engaged the cashier in small chit-chat (they seemed to like that sort of thing, fans especially) while waiting for her to place some small bills into the register. And she was too good to be true—she didn’t once mention who he was, didn’t fawn over him in the slightest. Maybe he had misinterpreted the gleam in her eyes, but he doubted that. He smiled at her, and, as if on cue, she looked up at him and smiled back.
Definitely a fan.
He heard a crashing sound from outside and glanced back out toward his son-in-law’s rental car.
He saw a horrific display: people attacking people hand-to-hand on the street, biting their necks, knocking them down, jumping on top of them, beating them senseless. They pulled people out of cars, and a few older cars moved and crashed into other cars—as well as a building, a light post, and in one case, a fire hydrant—creating traffic barricades.
The perpetrators—dozens of them—were men, women, children, blondes, brunettes, black-haired, red-headed, you name it, and while most of them were white, Jize noticed a black person. They all wore different styles of clothing, but they all had pale, pasty skin. Even the black person was ashen. Pustules were scattered over their bodies. They had blank expressions and vacant eyes.
They had appeared out of nowhere in less than a minute.
Jize couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “Holy shit!” was all he could say. He glanced at the woman behind the counter. She was busy counting out one-dollar bills, and if she heard him, she ignored him.
“Ma’am, look outside!” Jize screamed.
The cashier, whose name tag read “Janice,” sighed. “I have to keep looking at the money at all times when it’s out.”
“Then shut the register and look!”
Three seconds later, “Holy shit!” Janice exclaimed.
“That’s what I said.”
“What do we do?”
From inside the store, it looked to Jize like a horror movie playing out in front of him.
“Oh my god, are those people dead!” he exclaimed.
“Wait . . . Are they eating their brains?” she said incredulously.
“Oh my god . . . zombies.” This, Jize said, in just above a whisper.
“Huh?”
“Zombies eat brains. But they are not supposed to be real!”
Three zombies that had finished off their victims came together and rushed toward the gas station, running faster than anyone Jize had ever seen.
Jize could not see his family’s faces because they had turned around, watching the events unfold. His son-in-law turned back to face Jize and expressed terror. There was no escape from the scene as traffic was jammed.
Jize had no weapon—nothing to fight them with. These people appeared to be
