I remember everything so very well. Everything. The following will be written as if done so by an author, because I once aspired to be such. I spent two years of my life at college learning to be a writer, before I joined the military, and before I began preparing myself for the future.
The following is true to the best of my knowledge. It will feature extremely explicit words, descriptions, and the final telecaster words heard before we lost all contact. Before it all fell in, and silence reigned supreme.


The first thing anyone heard about any of it was a broadcast first thing in the morning on Fox News Network. And it was far from pleasant. Some mass sickness swept through Europe. They started off calling it a strain of the Flu; the first five victims had been cornered on vacation by a gang and beaten. When they returned they admitted themselves in Ocean Medical Center, in Brick, New Jersey.
The report said that a high grade fever led to dementia and an unruly attitude. The hospital was locked down and everything went very quiet for about a week. Life went on every day as good as possible, it was perfect. I had just finished my four years active duty in the military, and come out, and was ready to start my job with the local Police Department. I hadn’t had any children, and my wife and I were happy.
One week, to the day, later a FNN reporter stated that Brick, New Jersey had been quarantined by the Federal Government with Marine patrols daily. The report was a one-time occurrence, but mine and my wife’s interested was perked. The report said that the town had been quarantined three miles out on either side of the towns perimeter. Nothing else was said about Brick, New Jersey.
Reports about the new strain of the Flu began pouring in. All isolated reports. Here and there, to begin with. Chiba, Japan was the first report after the Brick, New Jersey report. Then came a report in from Los Angeles International Airport, California. I remember footage being shown taken from a pedestrians cell phone, before he was assaulted and rushed to Good Samaritan Hospital. The video was being shown for all of thirty seconds when the video feed was cut. At the time I didn’t think much about it. Nobody did.

More reports came in by the end of the week about the rest of the world. Mumbai, India was overrun, and the Indian government requested assistance from the United Nations, only to be rejected because UN Peacekeepers had been entirely stretched to handle the uprising in China and South Korea. They were calling it an epidemic. What started as a new strain of the flu became what they were calling HRV. The Human Rabies Virus.
The rest of it happened over night. Or it seemed like it did. I remember falling asleep that night and waking up the next day with everything in disarray. My first step into the kitchen was quiet as usual, and I lived in rural Alabama, so there was nothing to hear just outside my window. I poured a cup of coffee (You understand, of course, that I remember every detail of that day and a great deal from there on out.) I poured a second cup for my wife and walked into the dining room where I usually sit to watch the morning news.
What I didn’t understand, is that small outbreaks had been happening all around us all along, and the reports had been hidden from mainstream media, or kept from being reported. I don’t know.
When I flipped on the news, FNN, or it should have been, there was nothing. All I saw was a message on the screen reading, “Signal from Receiver has been lost.” So, I switched over to Analog, and used the bunny ears we used when the weather got bad. I waited, and stood next to my usual chair, watching the screen as the color bled across. All of the stations were on news report, and a chilling message was coming across the screen at the bottom, while the newscaster spoke: “We’ve experienced a series of gruesome events over the night, America. As I speak, an estimated ten million people have been killed as part of this new virus, and have, as horrible as it sounds, reanimated from death to attack the living. What we’re seeing is something out of a George A. Romero movie, and frankly, it seems like-- like there’s no hope in sight.”
I dropped my cup of coffee right then and there, and it was like time slowed down as they were showing the clips of US Federal Marshalls pulling the trigger on civilians; but not just simple civilians, no, these men and women were half clothed, missing pieces of their body, it was gruesome. You understand, it was the first experience I had with the undead, and I hadn’t even seen them in person.
My instincts kicked in, though. I had been a gun collector ever since I could buy a rifle, and had amassed a collection of rifles; that and what my father had left me when he passed away. God rest his soul. I had shells for a twelve gauge shotgun, 7.62 x 39 rounds for an AK-47, a handful of shells for a Winchester 700 Model 30-06 Long Range, and then only a few shells for a Remington 30-30, but I had them all handy. The AK-47 clip was even loaded.
Maybe I’d actually planned for something like this at some point. I mean, not the undead, but maybe an uprising, or an intruder, or something, shit, I don’t know.
I remember coming to about the time the cup hit the floor and scalding coffee hit my bare foot. I don’t remember if I yelled, or anything, but I don’t think my feet hit the floor four times between the kitchen and mine and my wife’s bedroom. However, when I did hit the bedroom I turned the TV on, yelling: “Baby! Baby! Baby! Wake up, watch. Watch the TV.”
I know she woke up, and was standing beside me not thirty seconds after I switched the television on. Before us both was a macabre representation in no way fit for audiences easily distraught. The streaming video was coming from Nashville, Tennessee, where a cameraman was running from a horde of people infected with the human rabies virus. I think the film went for another thirty seconds before the feed was cut, and a long silence came followed by the newscaster speaking. I think he apologized, and said it was just a technical difficulty, but after what I’d seen on the other clip, I knew differently.
My wife asked if it was some huge joke, shaking, clamped onto my arm. I sincerely don’t remember my answer, and I don’t remember getting dressed, but I had, at some point in there, fully dressed myself and piled all my guns in one gun case, except the semi-auto AK-47.
My wife and I argued for a brief while over whether or not to leave the house, and after it was all resolved we tried or damnedest to get in touch with somebody, anybody. Cell phones wouldn’t dial out. Land line wouldn’t dial out. Direct connect wouldn’t connect with anyone. It was the most ridiculous pile of over-used, over-relied crap I’ve ever seen in my life. Of course I didn’t have a HAM radio, or a CB in my little red Honda Civic. The only preparedness I had for this kind of thing was a loaded semi-automatic AK-47, an earned Marksman status in the Air Force, my beautiful wife, and hopefully I had plenty of luck.
We moved for the door and headed out on the screened in back porch. I had the Kalashnikov raised, looking around, ready to shoot any damn thing that moved. The way the back porch was set up, if I had put any thought to it at all, I could have set up a good defensive there, but I didn’t have enough food, enough ammunition, or enough spirit. I had to find help, or something.
I knew in times of national emergencies that police stations would be covered up, and with this thing being a virus a hospital would be a ridiculous place to set foot in. There was never something that could prepare anyone for this. All I knew was to run. And I had no idea where to go until my mind starting piecing ideas together, all in an order. I’ve got to keep myself and my wife alive. I’ve got to get food. We’ve got to have water. A remote house? No, that wasn’t any better than the one I left. Convenience store, gas station? No, not protected enough. A retail store. Wal-Mart.
When I got to the car there was this smell. It wasn’t the smell of rotting flesh, none of the zombies in my area had been reanimated long enough to actually be rotting. No, it was this metallic smell, it’s all I could explain. Then I realized it was blood. I turned around to see this-- just-- puddle all over the road, fresh it looked like. I didn’t know if it had been someone alive, or if it had been one of them, but when I drove out of the driveway I could distinguish enough to realize it was one of my neighbors. Somebody I knew. That cut deep, but instead of focusing on it, I drove, as hard and as fast as I could accelerate around.
Now you have to understand that I lived in small town Alabama, that’s like a population of nine-hundred. And no one, not a single one, knew what to do in the event of a situation like this. To everyone here, the rapture should have already come and taken them all away. It didn’t happen, unless these reanimated corpses were the shells of their former selves. Whatever, but when I rounded the corner just past the house, I realized just how bad it had gotten over night. These things-- The reanimated people, zombies, or whatever, were all in the road. About ten of them. Some of them were unclothed, or wearing their pajamas, or dressed in work outfits and they were all covered in blood, or injured in someway it seemed. Maybe one of them was normal looking. They all had this empty haze in their eyes, their arms raised and this horrible moan that almost seemed like it vibrated my whole ear. That was enough to be frightening.
I didn’t stop, if they were in my way, I smeared them and left this spray of reddish-black goop all over my windshield. I didn’t stop long enough to worry about clearing it off. I still had enough room to see clearly out of my windshield. And I kept on driving, full blast, when my cell phone rang. Apparently there had been a break in the line and there was enough time to get a call through. I answered. It was Lee, one of my buddies from the Air Force, one that went in with me, and he was a groomsman at my wedding. Our conversation was short. I told him my plan, and it was simple. Go to Wal-Mart, pick up any survivors and go, as quick as possible, but be safe. The call was cut short before I got any more words in.
I’d hoped that nothing had gone wrong. But I tried my best to logically piece things together about everything and what was going to happen. The whole time this was going on, ever since I’d hit the guy with the car, my wife had her eyes clenched shut and her fists clenched so tight her knuckles were white as paper. I just drove.
All these houses around us going down the road were just like always, but there were simple differences. The door was open at the front, or the car was parked funny, or gone, or burning. And then, when I got to the intersection I slammed on my brakes, and skidded. I turned the wheel and lost control, slid into a wooden decorative fence and splintered it in every direction. The Civic was a manual, and it stalled out. I started trying to crank it, several times over, and it wouldn’t turn over. I examined my surroundings carefully, and as I looked out of my window I heard a muffled thump against the car.
My wife freaked out, my heart was racing, and I faced the passenger window to see a kid banging on the glass, very slowly. Each time his hand made contact with the barrier, he left a bloody smear on it. When the hits stopped, he began attempting to bite the glass. The first time his mouth made contact with it there was black goop just rolling down the face of the glass. Now I realize that it was blood, but then it looked like really dark chocolate syrup, or ink, just pouring out of his mouth like-- yeah, it looked like motor oil. Dirty motor oil. His open-palm slaps became fists. I knew what I had to do.
This was the first time that I’d ever killed anyone. Ever. Yeah, I mean I served a short term in Afghanistan and returned fire on several instances. Yeah, there were confirmed kills, but see, no one knew who killed who.
When I stepped out of the car the kid made eye contact with me. Those glossy, milky, yellow, and bleeding eyes. I don’t know now what rushed through my mind, but I’m pretty sure it was only concern for my wife. The safety flicked off that semi automatic Kalashnikov like a hot knife through butter. I choked, though. I didn’t think I could do it. I looked at that kid, then to my wife, then back to the kid who was now dragging his broken foot around the end of the car and it let out a hideous moan that sent shivers up my spine. I didn’t falter this time. I remembered considering just injuring the kid, and tried. The first shot I fired was in the right shoulder. The kid never even stopped; I shot again. The heart. Nothing. Finally, I did what else was left and put a 7.62 x 39 round in his left eye. The rear of his head exploded like a ripe watermelon.
I had forgotten to pop the hood on the car, and had to double back. I remember my heart racing, considering only the engine and getting it running. My minds eye, however, noted subconsciously that the gunshot had alerted several more of them and they wanted me for dinner.
It took me only a few minutes to diagnose the problem after I got under the hood. What kind of luck do you have to notice that the spark plug had loosened? Someone upstairs was definitely watching out for me. I quickly turned and snapped the plug back in place and skidded around the side of the open driver door and hopped in the driver seat, handing the Kalashnikov to my wife and starting the car. No hesitations this time. I floored it, slinging gravel and putting a cloud of dust in the air. When I hit the road, I left treads too, I’d imagine.
The radio was only the long steady beep that led up to an emergency broadcast message. I know now it seems a bit macabre, but remembering Dawn of the Dead, I played a Disturbed CD that had Down With the Sickness on it. I got a kick out of it at the time, and so did my wife. It broke the weirdness for the length of the song. My drive to crossroads, which is the location I chose to take to go to the Wal-Mart closest to us, was relatively simple to get to, but getting past it was what became a problem.
When I came around the corner nearing the four-way intersection, I could see the pillar of smoke that stretched every bit of one-thousand feet in the sky. I slowed down gradually instead of slamming on them like last time. The intersection looked like a battle had gone down right there. The city and county police cars were lined up blocking the road; one of the stations was burning, and the flames were coming extremely close to a parked gas tanker. Made me uncomfortable, and for a good reason.
I found out later that the location had been the site for the first standoff against the undead. Apparently a Greyhound bus full of infected had flipped over next to the station, which started the fire, and they spilled out on the road, all thirty-four passengers. The city’s Dodge Charger Interceptor was on scene first. The passenger in the Charger was attacked and bitten. The driver, a female officer, had ten confirmed kills on one clip before she called for backup. Arrival of the other police was in minutes, but by the time they arrived other undead behind the station, from a trailer park, had arrived, and there were over one hundred. The standoff lasted two hours, and only after the police ran out of ammunition. They all ended up becoming one of them…
I drove around the line of police cars. Apparently I wasn’t far behind the fight, because one of the Officers reanimated as I drove by. Once I was on the other side of the slaughter fest, on clear road again, the tanker exploded and sent a ball of fire every bit of a mile in the air. Okay, that may be an exaggeration, but it was damn high. It also ignited all of the vehicles in that intersection, and if there were any infected that had yet to turn, well, let’s just say they were put out of their misery. I found out later, much later, from another survivor that the other station there had ignited as well.
The rest of the drive was encountering the same thing, over and over and over. It was just a huge nightmare. It still is. There was this-- this subdivision, a development of homes that a friend of mine moved into after we left the Air Force. I came around the curve in the road, and had to hit my brakes again. There in the middle of the road was two people. From distance I was at, it looked like the one on his knees was giving CPR to the one laying flat on his back. I pulled just a bit closer and opened the door. I remember my wife yelling at me, “What are you doing?” “Are you getting out?” “What the hell?!” And I did anyway. When I yelled at them, the one on his knees stood up and turned to face me.
You want to talk about freaked the hell out? When that zombie made facial contact with me I think my heart stopped beating. The thing had no lips, no eye lids, only one eye, and the whole left cheek was missed and a piece of the other guy on the road was hanging out of the missing jaw. What made it worse, though, was picking out, from what was left of the face, the friend I met in the Air Force. I threw up. Right then and there. Couldn’t shoot him at the time. I didn’t have what it took to kill someone I knew, I got back in the car and floored it. Even ran over the guy laying on the road. That’s a sound you don’t forget either. A thud and gush, and this fine spray of red mist all over the side of the car.
Memorably, though, I remember passing a parking lot on the right as I turned down a back road I’d chosen to use to avoid traffic and any road congestion. I wasn’t hauling ass as I came through, I was driving slow. I suppose now, if I could change it, I would drive faster, because what I saw was just horrible. There was a turned pregnant woman, that was just laying there as child bit and tore on her swollen stomach. His hands were clawing and tearing at her flesh like a rabid dog and a bloody deer or something. It was disgusting. But what made it worse was seeing the child pull the fetus out just as we passed her turning corpse. That scarred me. Still bothers me to this day.

Our arrival at the shopping center that held the Wal-Mart was incredibly easy. I had this horrible fear that there would be hundreds, maybe thousands of the reanimated out there in the parking lot and I was ready to kill however many of them was necessary. I had 29 rounds left in that Kalashnikov, and I would have emptied every single round on that parking lot. I knew already these things weren’t human. And I was already beginning to develop this callousness that I can only explain as Survival.
I didn’t have a set plan of how to get inside, but I didn’t have to go it alone. Lee, The buddy that had called me came hauling down the ramp to access Wal-Mart. And he wasn’t by himself. Behind him came my wife’s little brother, Joe, and his wife, Nicole, following in close pursuit, and what’s better than one really good friend? The guy who I called my brother for years. Things started to look up. Their arrival brought two new vehicles. Lee was driving a Dodge Nitro, not brand new, but he’d done some work on it, and Joe and Nicole were driving a Chevrolet Silverado that had been redneck-tricked out.
I mean it. Compared to my Honda, these guys made me look very unprepared. And they brought weapons with them as well.
I suppose they saw me, because they cut around corners, squealing their tires with every turn. They came up next to my spot in the parking lot with their windows rolled down, and two completely different songs blasting out of the interior of the vehicle. When they pulled up, I expected Joe to be driving, but of course not. He had his wife driving while he clung to his Remington lever-action 30-30 like it was attached to his arm, and this stupid grin on his face.
Since my parking here, I’d come up with a plan. We had to brace ourselves inside first and foremost. And I knew how we’d do it. We’d separate and gather supplies. But we’d have to do it in groups. I remember stepping out of the car, in this all-but-empty parking lot and telling them the plan while the song “Paint in Black” played very lightly in Lee’s Nitro. The original idea was to get the quick-setting bagged concrete en masse, and just caking the front doors down with it.
That changed.
We went across the way, and began looting the hell out of Lowes. Nails, Screws, Screw Guns, Circular Saws, everything you can imagine. Because the Nitro didn’t have a bed for big stuff, Lee was loading up all the smaller items he could fit in the back and on the seats. Chicken wire, empty gas cans to fill up, and even a couple of small generators along with all the bags of quickrete he could fit in the Nitro and waited on us to finish loading everything else up.
Lee attempted to use his phone while the rest of us loaded up enough wood off the racks that I thought it would be sufficient to block off the main glass-covered doors. It was at this time that we had seen maybe five reanimated in different locations around Wal-Mart. It wasn’t enough to effect our progress.

It was around three o’clock in the afternoon when we’d gotten everything unloaded inside the main entrance to Wal-Mart, and the opposing door was still locked from the over-night shift. We had a stack of eight plywood sheets, piled up neatly in the floor, and this stockpile of extra gear that we’d looted from Lowes. I’m still shocked to this day that there was no one inside Wal-Mart. Well… No one among the living. They came later.
After we’d unloaded everything, Joe and Lee went for the next stage in the plan. Fuel. We knew Wal-Mart had to have generators, and truthfully, whether or not the whole store had running generators, we had small ones we could, and would, obtain. Lee and Joe collected every specified gas container, and piled them up in the back of Joes Silverado. When they got ready to leave though, was first contact while at Wal-Mart. Lee was facing toward the store, and Joe had given his wife a kiss when this coarse howl sounded off, and it was right behind Lee.
I knew Joe was a good shot. I’d taught him a lot, but he was a hell of shot before I taught him some of my marksman-level tricks. But this took the cake, and really heightened our spirits.
The head of the reanimated was right above Lee’s left shoulder about to chomp in when an ear ringing 30-30 shot put a round right into the open mouth of the zombie, angled back, and through the base of the skull. That was it. A cloud of brain matter and blood slowly drifted away. “Holy shit” was all Lee could say.

While Lee and Joe were off emptying the fuel station across the parking lot, Me, my wife and Joe’s wife were boarding up all the doors that would cause a problem to us. All the ones with glass. We used a drill first to drill holes from the wood into the aluminum frame and then followed them with three-inch screws. I bet I put forty screws in every piece of plywood. It wasn’t going anywhere.
We’d encountered very little trouble aimed at us until this point. While I finished screwing in the last ten screws on the last door we had to close up, I had Nicole, Joes wife, watch the double fire doors at the front, so she could let Lee and Joe back inside. I guess I should have had Kim go with her because when she rounded the corner one of the reanimated latched onto her, not bit her, but did his damnedest to eat her face off. When I heard her scream, Kim looked at me, and I looked at her and we were off, yanking the Kalashnikov behind me as we ran.
The strap let the gun hit the ground once between our location at the door and customer service, where the hallway existed to the fire doors at the front of the store. I skidded coming around, still hearing her screaming quite well. I flicked the safety off and rounded the corner and there, laying on the floor was Nicole, with a Wal-Mart associate reaching for her, the very tip of his bloody finger brushing against her forehead. I never hesitated. I fired two consecutive rounds into the guy. One hit him in the ear, and his face turned, followed by the second round that hit just above his eye, and tore the top part of his skull off. It landed like a helmet on the floor.
There was this smell, too, like I can’t describe, that just permeated from the blood that had spilled everywhere. It was like rotten garbage, and this just, awful sweet dead smell that nearly made you sick, and did make you gag. God, I remember that smell that day like it was an hour ago. Sickening. My wife, Kim, gagged and dry heaved for fifteen minutes.
I dragged the body aside and used someone’s returned mop to push the blood into the corner, and then propped the mop up in the corner. I suppose in the time it had taken us to board up the main doors, Joe and Lee had had enough time to fill up all the cans of gas they’d piled up in the back of their truck, and I was impressed: They even locked all the pumps off so that the gas that remained would be ours. All ours. Worse came to worse, we could siphon the gas out of the underground container at a later date. I’m sure we could.
All the noise of our arrival had begun to draw the attention of all the reanimated in the area. I wish now that we’d had time to gather more supplies, but we were okay where we were at the time, and no problems had really arisen yet.
When we came to the fire doors, they had already been separated by someone who apparently left, which meant the alarm wasn’t going to sound off when we opened it. Good news, because I’d have pulled my hair out if I had to listen to a fire alarm on top of the God awful moans and howls of the undead at my doorstep.
Anyway, outside waited Lee and Joe, who had a new suggestion for where to put the vehicles and offload the gasoline. The Automotive Center. We could park the vehicles inside the four garage doors and lock ‘em down. Damn good idea, too. It helped us out a lot later. I knew Lee could drive a manual, so I let him drive my Honda. Joe drove his Chevy, and Lee let Nicole drive his Nitro to the back. I hoofed it back there with Kim at my side.
In the past, since we’d met, I’d taken time out to teach Kim how to shoot, just because it had been a hobby of mine; so she was sporting my Winchester 30-30. Looked damn hot with it, too. Anyway. We made a b-line for Automotive. On our way it looked like a war zone. Things were strewn all over the place, buggies left abandoned, and the television screens hanging from the ceiling were all broadcasting the same thing. “This is a message from your emergency broadcast system: Stay in your homes, and lock the doors. The crisis will be averted soon.” Right.
Sporting goods was right in front of us. And it tied into automotive. We had no idea what had happened in Sporting goods yet, but we’d find out soon enough.
Our arrival in sporting goods was merited with a rustle in the darkness of the unlighted room. A chill ran over my spine. My wife fired the 30-30 off once before I used my hand to force the barrel down to the floor. The shot she released shattered a concrete stone behind the barrier. That I could hear. What I couldn’t hear until after the ringing ended, was the sound of something dripping.
Kim was staying extremely close to me as I snatched a flashlight off a nearby display, tore open the packaging, and shined around to find the light. When I switched the rooms lights on I saw that she’d successfully blown a fist-sized hole in the head of a reanimated that stood behind a counter.
She still claims that she saw it. Maybe as a joke. But I believe and, truthfully, know that it was just luck that she actually hit the Zombie in the face, and luckily destroyed the brain of the reanimated. It really didn’t matter at the time. It worked. And we got a laugh out of it.
We still had city power at the time, so opening everything wasn’t any trouble at all. We used the electric raising tool, instead of the manual one we later learned how to use. And watched as the closes two gates opened. As they lifted, I watched the Nitro and the Silverado pull into the garage, followed closely by my Civic, and smiled as they all came to a stop in three of the four places inside.
We sealed it off, and switched over the lock-spots we found on the floor that kept anyone from breaking in overnight.
Our plan had gone well so far. No real complications. The five of us left Automotive to start the next stages of what we had to do. I know the rest of their minds had to be working in hundreds of different directions. I know mine was. We just slowly walked straight out of sporting goods. When we rounded the edge of the main sporting goods counter it was apparent that there had been a standoff there sometime during the night. There were four corpses, splayed out across the floor. There were puddles of that rancid, black blood, that had coagulated further on the spot.
Whoever had made the standoff was laying with his rifle against the counter, recently dead. It had been a clerk. Blown his own head off. I think that bothered me worse than the already dead ones we faced from there on out. This one guy, though, had killed four of them, and had apparently been bitten at some point in the fight and took his own life. His head was splayed open in two opposite directions, exposing the empty orifice that once held his brain.
We left well enough alone for the time being, and finished securing the entrances. We hadn’t realized when we’d secured the rest that we’d left the Garden entrance unsecured. And we were out of plywood. Joe and I exited in automotive while Kim held the door and allowed us to bring enough pallets in to block off the doors.
While we were getting everything together to barricade properly, Joe and Nicole were clearing the store, aisle by aisle, to make sure there weren’t any reanimated left in the store, and any of the dead that were there, he made sure to shoot in the head for safe measure.
In retrospect, I think that Joe was better off with the killing than the rest of us were. Of course, it may be because he’d had anger problems for so long. Maybe he was just more prepared. Hell, I really don’t know. But I do know how happy I was that he ran the initial clearing on Wal-Mart that day. I truthfully don’t believe I could have shot the kid in the head that day. Hmm.
Bracing the final door in the Garden Center wasn’t hard at all. We used the same power drill that I’d used on the other doors, and stacked the pallets on their sides, two high, and six across, and followed it up by moving two of the four registers against the barricade for extra support. It held, too, later, when we actually had problems.
After the barricading was finished, we all met up to finish clearing the stock room at the back of the store. We moved shelves around in front of fire exits in the back to help brace against attacks that might, by some chance force the doors open, however unlikely. We found only one reanimated in the back of the store, closed off in the receiving office, smearing his oily-black blood on the glass of the door.
Joe never hesitated when he found it. He squeezed a round off into the head, through the glass of the door, and splattered its brains all over the inside of the office.

Finally, we were settled inside the store.

Finally, things began looking up.

For the time being….

(To be continued…)