This morning I dropped my wife off at work at 6:30 AM. She’s headed to DC with her school until Saturday morning. To top it off, we only got four hours of sleep last night since we decided to go see the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie and got back after midnight. You can imagine my annoyance when I see my neighbor from across the street standing in my driveway!
I see this guy a lot. He is typically either sitting on his front steps or pacing back and forth on the sidewalk in front of his house. Sometimes he laughs maniacally. He gets picked up by the MBTA RIDE so I figure I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and drive around the block. Maybe he’ll be gone when I get back. Otherwise I call the cops.
I take my car past the high school, which usually isn’t open this time of the morning. Oddly, there are a lot of people hanging around on the soccer field. Soccer practice in the morning? Unlikely, it’s raining, and most of them aren’t high school age. Plus, they’re just walking around aimlessly.
Maybe I’m just sleeping.
I pull around back to my driveway. My neighbor is gone, but his RIDE pickup is sitting on the street. Empty, with the headlights on and the driver’s door open. What’s going on? I’m going inside. I unlock the door, but before I lock up, I unlock the bikes and take them inside too. Something isn’t right, and if there’s some messed up gasoline crisis riot, I will need transportation that’s faster than walking. I’m too tired to process right now. It’s naptime.
I wake up, not to my alarm, but the noise of my cats hissing and growling at the door. They’ve been fighting more than usual lately, so I head over to break it up, only to find that they’re not hissing at each other. There’s an ARM reaching through my mail slot! A bloody arm! What is going on? I start to call the cops as I head back upstairs. (someone getting murdered on the front stairs freaks one out) The other end picks up and I start to tell him what is going on. Immediately my mind goes back to the empty RIDE van, so I run to the front porch and take a better look. There’s now a bloody trail leading from the empty van to my front steps, and the arm belongs to someone in a T uniform! I can see my neighbor walking towards the high school soccer field. His hands are bloody, and then he stops. He turns, slowly, and I can see that is mouth is bloody, too! Did he BITE the RIDE guy to death?
Evidently not, because the body is moving.
As I continue relaying this information to the police, I start hearing screams and gunshots over the phone. The line goes dead. Below, I can hear the moaning of the RIDE driver and I realize the situation.
Fuck.
Zombies.
I curse my delay in buying firearms, but wait a minute. Flames are better against zombies anyway! Mental catalog of flammable items in the house: Old newspapers, gasoline, paint, drain opener, nail polish, bug spray, rubbing alcohol. Carpeted cat tree. I have a lot of knives, too. Those can kill a zombie with a head shot, right? If not, my landlord has a garage full of landscaping equipment.
OK, first things first. Get the RIDE zombie off my porch. I can safely cut his arm off without risk of a bite. I grab a cleaver, open the inner door, and take it off it one shot. Zombie bones are brittle. The thing reaches its other arm through, and that one gets chopped also. Hopefully that will stall them, as I don’t trust the deadbolt. Our foyer has a big, heavy shelf unit. I bar the door with that.
I have enough food stocks for a couple days for myself and the animals. If the power goes out, I just might need to cook on a fire of zombie flesh. First plan, destroy the two zombies in the front yard, then siphon the gas out of the cars while the coast is still clear. My landlord is a cop. I’m sure he’s well armed. His wife and kids are not at home, and he may not have made it out of the police station alive. Next step, armor the bicycles, grab everything flammable, and start looking up plans for flamethrowers. I am not going down easy.
