DEAD AMERICA: THE NORTHWEST INVASION
BOOK 1
PORTLAND - PART 4
BY DEREK SLATON
© 2020
CHAPTER ONE
Day Zero +22
Zion stepped out of his apartment early in the morning. As the door clicked shut behind him, he looked up the dimly lit hallway towards the stairwell, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the low light. The only source was from a mirror at the end of the hallway that had been positioned to reflect the sunlight from the outer wall.
“Really need to add some emergency lighting to the shopping list,” he muttered as he began to walk. A few doors down, he stopped and smacked a door with the palm of his hand a few times. “Yo, Calvin, we got work to do, brother!” he called.
He waited a moment, hearing low groaning and shuffling from inside. When his friend didn’t come to the door, he smacked it again loudly, the sound echoing through the empty hallway.
“Don’t make me come in there!” he warned playfully. There was more shuffling, and then muffled voices, which made his brow furrow.
Zion turned the knob, cracking the door open. As soon as it was an inch side, Calvin appeared, bracing his body against it to keep it from opening further. His hair stuck out in all directions, his face flushed, looking far more frantic than he usually was in the morning.
“Hey, Zion, man,” he blurted, “can you give me like, two minutes, and I’ll be out?”
His visitor stared him down suspiciously. “Yeah… I can do that,” he said slowly. “But first, you gotta tell me who else is in here with you.”
“What?” Calvin asked, voice shrill. “There’s nobody in here.”
Zion narrowed his eyes. “I heard voices.”
Calvin opened his mouth, freezing, presumably going over excuses in his head, but none that worked post apocalypse such as I was just watching TV. After a few awkward moments of silence, he sighed and stepped aside.
“All right, you got me,” he admitted. “But it’s not what you think.”
Zion smirked. “Which means it’s definitely what I think,” he quipped, and moved into the apartment.
There was paper and empty bottles everywhere, the picture of a perfect bachelor pad. As he entered the living room, he spotted Tori sitting on the couch, nose wrinkled in embarrassment. Her sandy hair was askew, sticking up on one side, and she pushed her glasses up her nose as she avoided his gaze.
“Morning, Tori,” Zion greeted brightly.
She chewed a fingernail. “Oh, good morning, Zion,” she babbled, still not looking at him. “I was… just… getting ready to join the others in the parking garage.”
“Well, we’ll be down in a bit,” he said gently, smiling and nodding. “Look forward to seeing what you came up with.”
She nodded like a bobblehead. “You won’t be disappointed.” She grabbed some papers from the coffee table and rushed out of the apartment, throwing a wild grin at Calvin on her way out.
He shot her back a goofy smile and watched her leave, closing the door behind her. As soon as it was closed, Zion threw his arm around his buddy, shaking him.
“Hell yeah, get you some player!” he gushed.
Calvin’s face flushed crimson. “It’s not like that,” he insisted.
“Oh, you ain’t gotta be shy around me,” his friend teased. “Do you have any idea what a relief it is that I’m not going to have to watch my sister whoop your ass for hittin’ on her one of these days?”
Calvin bristled. “That’s still on the table,” he said.
“Come on, man.” Zion rolled his eyes. “You can’t tell me it ain’t what it looks like. Pretty girl waking up in your apartment with hair like that?”
His friend shook his head and motioned for him to follow over to the couch. There were numerous papers strewn about across the coffee table, despite what Tori had taken with her.
“Is it safe to sit on that couch?” Zion asked, eyebrow raised.
Calvin scoffed. “I’m telling you man, it’s not what you think,” he insisted.
They sat down, Zion playfully looking around for any messes he shouldn’t be sitting on. As he got situated, Calvin rifled through the papers, and pulled out what looked like engineering schematics of a truck.
“What the hell is this?” Zion furrowed his brow.
His friend held out the paper. “It’s what Tori and I were working on last night,” he explained.
Zion grabbed the drawing and inspected it, eyes roving over the badass vehicle with a reinforced front end, spikes, and several other bells and whistles. It was the perfect zombie-killing machine for the apocalypse.
“So you’re telling me that y’all spent the night drawing trucks?” he asked, gaping.
Calvin grinned wolfishly. “Not just any truck,” he said, “it’s my future battle truck.”
Zion blinked at him in confusion. “Battle truck?” he blurted.
“Hell yeah, a battle truck!” his friend exclaimed, throwing up his hands. “We’re in the apocalypse, and it’s about damn time we went all Mad Max with this.” He leaned forward as Zion stared dumbfounded at the drawing, grabbing a joint from a little box on the corner of the coffee table and sparking it up. “I ran into Tori at dinner last night, and we got to talking,” Calvin explained as he puffed. “She asked how Fingers was coming along with rebuilding my trucks, and then I made a joke about Mad Max, and then the next thing you know she started throwing out ideas. After that, we came up here and started drawing stuff, and the time kinda got away from us.”
Zion chuckled, shaking his head. “Man, I hope to god you aren’t that oblivious when you are watching my back out there,” he said.
“What do you mean?” Calvin’s brow furrowed.
“Come on man,” his friend said, tossing the paper on the table, “you have a highly intelligent and cute girl talking about weaponizing your truck, and you didn’t make a move?”
Calvin took a long drag on his joint and shook his head. “I really didn’t think she-”
Zion cut him off by smacking him on the back of the head. “Lucky for
