Zpoc Exception Series (Book 1): Re-Civilize (Chad) Read online

  Thinking of Mom made me sad again. As I went into the bathroom and closed the door behind me, I couldn’t help but wonder how I would react if Mom and my sister showed back up as zombies. I honestly didn’t know if I would be able to put them down like I did Dad.

  I was angry with Dad, so it didn’t bother me as much as it probably should have that I had to shoot him and put him down permanently. I was a little sad about it, but he upset me and came back as a zombie and tried to attack me. I hadn’t had much of a choice and the emotional disconnect helped me deal with what I’d done.

  The giggle-slut really didn’t bother me. I’d almost enjoyed putting her down. She shouldn’t have been here. She shouldn’t have been with Dad. Hell, maybe if she hadn’t been with Dad, maybe she’d still be human. I didn’t know what had happened that had turned them, but it was obvious they’d been together. Otherwise, I don’t think they would have shown back up here together.

  After I finished in the bathroom, I washed my hands and headed back out into the hall and toward the kitchen. I planned to eat and get some more rest. My plan was to build up some strength, pack up as many supplies as I could carry, and leave the house.

  I could have stayed for a while and been safe, but the more I thought about it, the more I knew I didn’t want to be here if Mom and my sister returned as zombies.

  I decided to raid the fridge. I wanted to eat everything that would go bad first. I couldn’t take anything that needed to be kept cold with me. I was actually surprised there was still electricity. I figured it wouldn’t last too much longer.

  Flies kept landing on me as I was getting food. At first I couldn’t figure out where they were coming from, but then I thought about it… The bugs had to be coming from the dead bodies. I remembered learning something about flies spreading disease in school. When a fly landed on the apple I was eating, I almost freaked out and threw it. Then I remembered I was immune to the virus and calmed down. But, then I thought about it again… Even if I couldn’t get sick, I didn’t want to eat something that just had a fly on it that had recently been on a dead body. The thought of it was gross.

  “Ugh!” I said, and threw the apple in the trash.

  I got more food – half a gallon of milk, another apple, a loaf of bread, and some lunch meat – and headed back to my sanctuary in the laundry room. I turned on the light, shut the door behind me, put my food down on top of the dryer, locked the door, and then shoved a blanket against the bottom of it to make it harder for bugs to get inside. I knew the light was a risk, since there was a small window in the laundry room, but I only planned to leave it on long enough to make myself a couple of sandwiches.

  I rushed, but I was halfway through making the second sandwich when I caught sight of a shadow passing by the window out of the corner of my eye. I didn’t take any chances.

  I reached over and turned the light off.

  “Shit,” I breathed as soon as I’d done it.

  After I turned the light off I realized that if whoever was outside was human, they would know someone was in here. But, on the flip side, if what was outside was a zombie, I’d made the right decision. I had a fifty/fifty chance of having made the right decision.

  I abandoned the sandwiches and knelt, searching for the gun I knew was close-by with my fingers. I mentally wished I’d reloaded the revolver before I’d fallen asleep earlier.

  I breathed a sigh of relief when my fingers found the cool steel.

  I clutched the gun to my chest and listened. I tried to breathe as silently as I could so I could hear every little noise around me.

  I was more scared than I’d ever been in my life. I couldn’t believe how careless I’d been for the last few days. I could easily have been killed over and over again. The only rationalization for my carelessness was that I’d already believed myself to be dead. It was a miracle I was still alive.

  Tense minutes passed and I didn’t hear anything threatening. There was no banging that would indicate someone or something was trying to get in. I even listened carefully for the sounds of glass breaking or broken glass being ground under someone’s foot as they came through the broken living room window.

  I was safe, by sheer luck, again.

  I breathed a sigh of relief, put the gun down, and reached up to get my food. I didn’t start eating right away – my stomach was too knotted up with tension – but I wanted to keep it close because I needed to eat. I didn’t have an option. I had to build my strength up. Just the activity I’d done since waking up had drained me. I wanted to lie down, close my eyes, and drift away from reality, but I couldn’t. I had to force myself to calm down, while staying awake, until I could eat. Then, and only then, I would allow myself to rest.

  To calm myself down I started thinking about video games. I thought about how they worked and how I strategized what I needed to do to get through the game. It usually took me a few times on each level to figure things out so that I wouldn’t die, but I was good at making plans to get to where I wanted to be. I knew I could do it in real life too, I just had to be more careful because one slip up and I could be dead for real.

  “Strategy is everything,” I whispered, and started eating a sandwich.

  By the time I was done eating the first sandwich, I knew what I would do when I woke up again… I would plan out my strategy to survive in the zombie world. In my strategy would be a list of multiple weapons I could make or find on the fly. I remembered how, in my video game, there were cool weapons that could be found everywhere.

  My plan continued to take shape in my head as I consumed the food and milk I’d brought back to the laundry room. My eyes got heavier and heavier with each passing moment, as my stomach became fuller.

  Leaving some of the milk in the jug, I gave into my exhaustion, lay down, and let sleep take me once again.

  Chapter 8

  I was warm and comfortable, and didn’t want to move. In my half-awake state, I felt I needed to wake up for some reason…but I couldn’t remember why. Maybe it was school, but my alarm hadn’t gone off yet.

  I yawned, stretched, and forced my eyes open.

  I frowned. I wasn’t in my room. I was on the floor in the laundry room.

  As I sat up and looked around, reality came flooding back.

  I found out why I was warm and comfortable though. I was lying in a pool of sunshine, pouring in through the laundry room window. Beyond the glass, through the sheer curtain, the sky was blue with white puffy clouds floating aimlessly through it. If I hadn’t known better, I could easily believe the world was as it always had been. But it wasn’t.

  With reality came the remembrance of my plans.

  “Time to do this,” I said, stood up, and sighed.

  I had to go to the bathroom, but I took the time to find the revolver that I’d dropped while I was sleeping. I also found the extra bullets. I reloaded the gun, put the rest of the spare bullets in the front, right pocket of my jeans, and headed for the door, loaded gun in hand.

  I paused to listen for intruders. I didn’t hear anything, so I unlocked and opened the door. I stepped out and stood for a moment, listening again.

  I couldn’t place it, but something felt off.

  I took a couple cautious steps forward and my foot found an empty granola bar wrapper lying on the floor; it crinkled under my weight. I instantly knew someone had been here.

  “Shit,” I whispered.

  Now I had to decide if I wanted to go back into my sanctuary and pee in the drain or the sink or go to the bathroom and search the house.

  I wanted to be a coward. I wanted to hide and not deal with whoever might be in the house with me, but I knew that probably wasn’t a good idea. I would be somewhat of a sitting duck and I wouldn’t be able to pack up the supplies I needed to get out of the house.

  I took a step back and glanced into the pantry; it looked like some things had been taken and moved around, but it hadn’t been ransacked.

  Odd, I thought. I couldn’t imagine why someone
would take some things but leave others, and in a neat fashion.

  I cursed my weak state and the fact I’d slept so soundly that I’d forgotten about the danger I was in. Hell, it had taken me a few minutes to even realize I wasn’t in my room waiting for my alarm to go off and let me know I needed to get up for school.

  I took a moment and examined the shelves more closely. Obviously some of the granola bars had been taken – and consumed – judging by the wrapper on the floor. But the other items missing were a couple cans of soup. The fully prepared ones my little sister liked – she was a pop the top and eat it kid. She didn’t even warm the soup up, and that’s why I remembered them. I thought it was gross that she hadn’t heated them before eating them.

  I knew I needed to search the house to make sure whoever had been here was gone, but I also knew I needed to empty my bladder first.

  Using my best stealth-ninja skills, I made my way to the bathroom. I didn’t see anything else out of place. I hurried and did my business with the door open – I didn’t need someone to sneak down the hall and jump me when I went back out into the hall. I kept the gun in my hand the entire time; it was awkward, but I managed. I was proud of myself for not shooting my dick off in my nervous state.

  I reached forward to flush the toilet, but thought better of it at the last moment. If someone was here with me, I thought for sure they would hear the water running and know someone else was in the house. Although, I suspected they already knew, since they had to have been the shadow I’d seen pass the window last night. And, if I was right, and they were, I had to wonder if they’d stuck around at all. Apparently they didn’t mean me any harm…or they were biding their time and planned to kill me once I was out of the laundry room where they could take me by surprise.

  I spun around when I heard a dull thud, and pointed the gun at the open doorway. After my heart stopped racing, I realized the sound had been far away…like it had come from upstairs.

  I took a couple calming deep breaths and left the bathroom. I held the gun in both hands in front of me like I’d always seen the cops do on TV when they were clearing a house. I went room to room on the first floor, just like I’d seen on TV too. The only thing I found was another granola bar wrapper at the base of the stairs.

  Either these people are stupid or they want to be found, I thought, shaking my head at the obvious trail.

  I heard a cough when I was halfway up the stairs. Not a clearing throat cough, but a severely sick cough. This made me pause and think for a moment. I didn’t know what I was walking into, but obviously someone wasn’t well. They could either be sick from before the zpoc or they could be bitten… Either way, I had no idea what I would do with them when I confronted them. But, the sickness the invader had definitely explained why the soup was missing from the pantry.

  While I was standing there thinking, my sister’s bedroom door – to the left of the stairwell and beside the bathroom – opened slowly. A man emerged without even looking around to see if anyone was nearby and that it was safe. He was average height, going bald, had thick glasses, and was wearing a tan, soiled business suit without the jacket. He had rolled his dress shirt sleeves up to his elbows. He wore brown dress shoes that were scuffed badly. He wasn’t impressive in muscular structure. Instantly I surmised – from his attire and lack of street smarts – that he had to be some kind of office worker before the world had gone to shit.

  I made sure I had the gun trained on him before I spoke.

  “What are you doing in my house, ass-hat?”

  The man jumped, cried out, spun around to face me, and threw his arms up as soon as he saw the gun I was holding.

  He tried to speak, but only managed to sputter.

  I advanced up a couple more of the steps to the landing.

  “Speak!” I snarled.

  “I…I…I needed somewhere to take my daughter,” he finally muttered, motioning toward my sister’s bedroom with one of his hands. “She’s really, really sick.”

  I looked him up and down to make sure he wasn’t armed. I hadn’t seen a bulge or any other indication he was hiding something on his person from behind, and there was equally nothing threatening about him from the front.

  “What kind of sick is she?” I asked. “How long has she been sick?”

  The man swallowed hard, focusing on the gun. He didn’t answer.

  “Hey, I’m talking to you!” I said, and moved the gun up slightly to try and get him to focus on me instead of it. “What kind of sick and how long has she been sick?”

  “She was…” he paused, shifted his weight from side to side, foot to foot, and looked at the floor before he continued, “…bitten.” He said the last word in almost a whisper.

  I frowned, remembering how sick I’d been. “How long ago?”

  The man didn’t answer. Instead he started crying.

  “Damn it, man,” I said, rolled my eyes, and took a step toward him to regain his attention. “How long ago was she bitten?”

  “Three days, I think,” he blubbered.

  “She hasn’t died yet? She’s just really sick?”

  He nodded energetically.

  I lowered the gun.

  The man frowned and lowered his hands, wiping tears from his face.

  “She’s gonna be okay,” I said, letting the gun hang from my right hand, at my side.

  “What do you mean?” he asked. “A zombie bit her! There’s no way she’s going to be okay.”

  I laughed. “If you believe that, why are you taking care of her?”

  “She’s my daughter…all I have left.”

  I nodded.

  “How do you know she’s going to be okay?” he asked again.

  I smiled and reached up with my left hand to pull my shirt just far enough away from my neck to show the bite on my shoulder.

  “I got really sick, but I’m fine now.”

  His mouth fell open in shock.

  “I didn’t know that was possible,” he said. “I thought once you were bitten, you would be one of them…”

  “Me too,” I said, “but that’s not how it worked out.”

  “Tell me everything,” he said, stepping forward. His eyes were bright with excitement and sparkling because of his tears.

  I decided he wasn’t a threat and tucked the gun in the waistband of my jeans at my lower back.

  “First…does your daughter need anything?” I asked, and nodded toward the door. For the first time since I’d woken up human I was excited. I’d suspected there would be others like me, seriously hoped there were, but I hadn’t expected one to just fall into my lap.

  Chapter 9

  Once we’d checked on the man’s daughter – Elaine – we headed downstairs to secure the house and talk. The man – Clay – told me how they’d gotten in and what they’d seen on the outside. He kept asking me about what happened to me, but I wanted to make sure we were safe before we took the time to sit down and have a chat. My plan to get away from the house fast had changed; I wasn’t going anywhere until Elaine was better. That meant we had to do things to make the house safe for us all until she was well again. We had plenty of food in the pantry and could easily survive for a week or more without going to look for supplies.

  Clay helped me take Dad and the giggle-slut’s corpses outside – we hid them behind the bushes in the front yard. Then we went back into the house and out into the garage through the laundry room to tear plywood sheets off the walls; I thanked my lucky stars Dad had never finished his remodeling work out there or it would have been harder to get the supplies we needed to board up the windows. We also grabbed a box of nails and a hammer that were lying on a shelf from the same unfinished project.

  It took us about an hour to secure the house to our comfort.

  I went to the pantry, grabbed a couple of bottles of water, and headed back out to the living room where Clay was sitting.

  “Are you going to tell me what happened to you?” he asked as I handed him a bottle of water; he o
pened it right away and downed half of it.

  I sat across from him on the couch, opened my water, and did the same.

  “I skipped school,” I started, “so I wasn’t out in the world when everything happened. As a matter of fact, I witnessed my dad come home and have sex with some woman I didn’t even know.” I motioned to the boarded up window. “They did that when they came back as zombies.”

  “So you were here when the zombie thing started?” Clay asked.

  “Yup, I was up in my room getting high and playing video games, trying to get the vision of my dad cheating on my mom out of my head. Eventually I knew something was wrong. No one came home. My mom and my sister never returned. Those two came back and tried to kill me though, so I don’t know if my mom and sister will do the same at some point or not.”

  “Did one of them bite you?” Clay asked, motioning to the window.

  I shook my head no as I took another drink of water.

  “No, a half-naked old woman did,” I said, and shuddered. “It was a horrible experience all around.”

  Clay snickered.

  “Yeah,” I said, chuckling, “it sounds funny now, but wasn’t at the time. When my family didn’t come home and I couldn’t reach any of them on their phones, I turned on the news. That’s when I found out what was going on. I had to find out for myself that zombies were real and I wasn’t whacked out of my mind or something. I went outside and got attacked on my way back to the house.”

  “That sucks,” Clay said, and finished off his water. “Cell phones don’t even work anymore – I tried to use ours yesterday.”

  “Good to know,” I said. I’d known things would stop working eventually. Next would be the electric. “What happened to you guys? How did Elaine get bitten?”

  Clay’s face twisted as if he were in a lot of pain. For a moment I was sorry I asked, but then he started to talk in a quiet tone while he stared at the floor.