He would need at least more than one bullet. He started to load the gun with more ammo as the fog of grief gave way to his survival instinct. Maybe a pathogen was at work, maybe there could be a cure, but even if there was, how could someone live with less than half a brain?
His daughter began to rise. He stood up, lifted his gun, and pointed it at her. The skin had not fully grown back, and there was still a gaping hole in her head. Where it had grown back, it had just covered that portion of the cavity. The brains were not growing back.
It was decision time. Life as a zombie, life with less than half a brain.
He fired.
None of Marty’s law enforcement training had prepared him for this.
After blowing his family’s brains to smithereens, he finally looked around for more zombies. There were none. But it horrified him to see front doors open throughout his neighborhood. Every single one. Some were off one hinge, and some were detached and on the ground.
What if the zombies purposely, methodically, canvassed the entire neighborhood? What kind of diabolical scheme was this?
Could there be any survivors?
Jamie.
Jaime was all he had left. He had to get to him before he, too, turned into a zombie.
He walled off his grief, his fear, his rising sense of horror—compartmentalized it, somehow.
But his heart pulsed like a shaman’s drum beat, and he shook uncontrollably, in the pangs of full-blown panic.
He could come back to bury the bodies. He would come back to bury the bodies. But first, he would have to find Jamie. Rescue him. Before it was too late.
He found himself in his patrol car backing out of the driveway, when it occurred that he would need more ammunition. As much as he could carry.
Going back inside his house, he found his feet barely felt the ground as he ran toward his open front door. He reached his gun cabinet and cleaned it out of shells, stuffing various pockets in his uniform.
Once back in his patrol car, shock gave way to lucidity. He started the engine, squealing his tires as he backed out of the driveway. He gunned it down the slope of the road and turned onto the highway. Heading south in his police car, Marty weaved in and out of the Northbound stalled traffic, sometimes resorting to the shoulder, sometimes resorting to the median strip. He continued to encounter zombies traveling north and had to switch off the collision detector and ram down many of them. The least of his concerns was the bumper of the patrol car.
He thought the entire population of Beaver Park, all five thousand, were heading north, but there weren’t many stalled cars in that direction—he guessed some had “escaped” north. He prayed for them, not that it would do any good.
But once he reached the police roadblock, he realized that the roadblock only sealed many drivers’ doom. Past the barricade, the road was full of traffic now in both directions, so navigating his way into town was a tough slog, especially now that there were sign, lamp, and traffic poles in various places. Usually, he tilted his car with the one side on the sidewalk and the other in the bike lane. Sometimes he nudged cars out of the way, often moving one stalled car, put into neutral, into another. Other times, he clipped or side-swiped cars, unconcerned about the cosmetics of the patrol car’s body.
He brushed an endless number of trees.
Jamie was all he had left now. Fifteen wonderful years with Karen. Seven exciting years with Amanda. And then in one day, hell in one afternoon, in less than two hours, his life was turned upside down. Ruined. Over.
Not entirely over.
Jamie.
He gave up on understanding God long ago, refusing to believe that God allowed suffering to happen when He could prevent it. Oh, there was all that new age crap about Free Will and “lessons learned” and all that bullshit. But this was a classic example. How can you justify a God that allowed a zombie apocalypse to happen? The simple answer is you can’t, and the more you reach for one, the more obvious it is that you’re reaching.
For the longest time, until a few hours ago, Marty figured that, deep down, everyone believed God had only limited powers, that He couldn’t fix everything. But as far as Christianity goes, that renders Him useless, because the whole point is to give yourself up completely to God, because God has a plan and will take care of anything.
Well, if this was God’s plan, He could take it and shove it up His tight little sphincter where it belonged.
Marty was almost to Beaver Park when he sped by three small groups of zombies on his way to the turnoff, past the police station toward Gerald’s house. Luckily, the intersections weren’t completely jammed and navigable. He turned up Airport Road. There was no median strip, but there was a wide sidewalk. Still, to avoid light poles, he had to get creative, at one point having his right side wheels on the sidewalk, with his left side up on a short retaining wall. It wasn’t long before he turned into Gerald’s small development.
With his watch partially broken, Alexander was forced to use his phone to dial his wife and son. His daughter didn’t have a phone. On every attempt, he got a fast busy signal.
He texted his wife, “Im ok r u?”
The text marked “delivered,” and he waited for a response.
He texted the same thing to each of his parents, awaiting a response to both.
After a few minutes without a reply, he sent another text, this time to all as a group, but he didn’t get a response to that one either.
Alexander felt an escalating sense of horror the more time passed without an answer from his family. The apocalypse had swept the world. That’s what they said on TV. Emily had received
