Timothy Frese prefers to look at this life as a parallel universe.
He keeps this thought in his mind as he promptly strikes the head of an approaching corpse with the weighted end of his cricket bat. The blood and bits of brain matter splatter his shirt, and some lands in his mouth. He spits the metallic tasting substance onto the ground with disgust as his close friend Zak Wohlschlegal wanders around the street corner.
“The others are securing a building somewhere on…” he begins.
“Why are we all that’s left?” Timothy interrupts. Obviously he is not listening.
A silence is shared between the two before anyone speaks. Zak looks down at the gore splattered body on the ground.
“Zombies…” This word rolls out of Timothy’s mouth slowly and with distaste.
“It sounds ridiculous, that word,” Zak replies.
Timothy turns and looks down at the recently deceased zombie. To his surprise he recognizes the corpse. The two say nothing as the stare at this man on the ground, slack jawed and awkward looking.
An orange setting sun blazes down upon the small town of Council Grove, KS. The town is quiet.

Timothy Frese and Zak Wohlschlegal walk slowly down a scarred and broken street. The presence of the living dead is spread thinly across the block. Neither speaks. Timothy looks back at how this apocalypse started for him. Each thought triggers another until a cascade of emotion floods into his brain. He quickly stops thinking of these matters. Understanding the reality of what was happening to his world would only freak him out. Freaking himself out would get him killed.
“In here.”
Zak points towards the only building on the street with wood-barricaded windows. It is the local hardware store. Timothy looks to his left down the main street of Council Grove as Zak raps his knuckles on the main entrance. The town looks eerily familiar despite its present situation. Timothy attempts to blot out the flesh-eating corpses from his view and sees his hometown, harmless and innocent. He is abruptly called back to his present location as a member of the undead stumbles into his view and grabs ahold of his arm. Timothy is forced to fling the body away from himself as if he were shaking a spider from his skin. A commotion is heard on the other side of the door to the building. It eases open as Zak cocks his shotgun and fills the corpse’s brain with metal. They both turn to see the familiar sight of Tony Hecht, Robby Benzer, and Samuel Eldridge, visible through the doorway.
“You two always gotta make an entrance,” states the voice of Tony from inside the building.
The date is June 25, 2009. Timothy Frese is riding his bicycle to his friend, Tony Hecht’s, home. Supposedly a few of his other friends are going to be there. Timothy is turning left off of Washington Street and on to Main. Riding his bike upon the sidewalk, he gathers speed and heads past store after store. Although this is the center of the town, it is quietly deserted. Timothy makes note of this fact, but chooses to ignore it. With a population of approximately 2000 people it is not too unusual for the town to be this barren. Timothy prepares to turn right at the next corner just as a gray van careens into view, horn blaring, and continues speeding off in the opposite direction. The vehicle must be going close to 70 miles per hour. Timothy squeezes his brakes and stops just in time.
“Jesus,” states Timothy, nerves reeling.
After his attention has been averted, eyes following the vehicle, he notices something. The area is not as deserted as he had thought. In fact there are roughly sixty people crowded in the street ahead. ‘Is there a convention or something happening?’ thinks Timothy, bewildered.
Although Timothy’s eyesight has been declining over the years, he is able to make out that something is not quite right with this group. The quiet chatter his mind had assumed he was hearing now appears as a series of low moans. Achill goes through Timothy as he slows his bike. The tires skid on the ground and he loses control. He flips onto the hard pavement and feels a wet a viscous substance covering the ground. His shirt tears and is covered with the warm liquid. Looking down, he sees the unmistakable dark red color of blood covering the road.
Timothy looks up. The crowd that had been meandering through itself previously has now fallen silent and focused their attention on Timothy. They begin to approach, arms outstretched. Timothy is normally not one to jump to conclusions, but, right now, on this street, his mind embraces the fact that had been infiltrating his subconscious for some time. An unbelievable thought.

“Goddamn zombies,” states Zak, coolly lowering his shotgun.
“Get in here, now!” says Robby. He is oddly hushed and speaks through his teeth. He motions with his arm beckoning them forward.
Robby is incredibly short for his age and is the smallest of the group. He is usually the target of jokes in times of less stress. He is wearing a black D.A.R.E. t-shirt which shows the wear and tear of the past day. He wields two pistols; his left one is in a holster. The right pistol is cocked and pointed over Timothy’s shoulder and out the door.
Timothy turns to look behind himself. The dead have begun to gather in the street outside.
“@#$#ing dumbstruck.”
Samuel Eldridge walks forward holding an old 2x4. He kicks the door shut and quickly bars it forcefully with the wood. Sam has extremely long red hair that descends far past his shoulders. He is the toughest and by far most badass of the group. He has a pierced left eyebrow and ear and wears a black t-shirt.
“Where the hell were you two?” questions Tony.
Timothy turns to look at Tony Hecht. He is relatively the same height. He has light brown hair and is wearing a Super Mario “1-UP” t-shirt. He is sitting on the store’s check-out counter counting what appears to be a dwindling supply of ammunition. Before Timothy or Zak can reply, he throws the last shell into a pile and sighs.
“There ought to be some more of these around Ace somewhere…”
Timothy finally looks around at his surroundings. He now acknowledges that he is indeed at Council Grove’s local Ace Hardware store. Timothy’s brain happily renders the fact that he has access to absolutely anything in this store.
Zak Wohlschlegal interrupts Timothy’s thought.
“Tim and I will go search in around the store for some supplies,” he says. He is as eager as Timothy to explore the rest of the store’s usefulness.
He grabs Timothy by the upper arm and pulls him from the group, directing him away from the entrance. They walk down the main aisle of the store. Timothy begins making mental notes of what aisles contain what equipment. The infinite amount of resources that are now his to use is nearly overwhelming. Zak opens a door in the back of the store and Timothy, quite distractedly, follows him through.




In the main entrance Tony is passing the ammunition out to the others. Half of the shotgun shells go to Sam, and the other half are saved for Zak. The pistol rounds go to Robby, and he dumps them into his pockets. Tony quickly counts his own supply of rifle ammunition before placing it in a pouch hanging from his side.
“Well, all I’m saying is we can’t stay here long,” says Tony “We may have lots of zombie-killing equipment here at Ace, but as far as food all we’ve got are a receding supply of peanuts and snickers.” He throws a small packet of peanuts into Robby’s face to accent this point.
“Have you looked outside recently!?” interjects Robby, on the edge of hysteria. “They’re accumulating! The street is crawling with those things. And it’s getting worse! We can’t possibly move anywhere!”
Tony’s eyes flash out through the window and fall upon an increasing horde of corpses. He swallows and looks slightly defeated. This is not the first time this conversation has surfaced.
“Sam, what do you think? You think we should just skedaddle out of here across Council Grove?” asks Robby.
Sam looks up from checking his shotgun, thinks for a second then states, “@#$# you both. I don’t give a $#@#. The only reason I’ve stayed with you this long is that I’ve got a one out of five chance of getting eaten first with you guys instead of a full one hundred percent.”
The group is silent for a few seconds as this response sinks in. Sam then walks off, tapping his shotgun against the shelves along his path. A bewildered Tony and Robby watch him exit.
Suddenly, they hear a loud yell coming from the back of the store. This sound is then followed by a series of crashes.
“Jesus Christ,” Robby grumbles angrily cocking his pistols and jumping off his chair towards the back of the store. Tony follows sliding his rifle over his shoulder. They sprint down the aisle until they see the half ajar door.
“Can’t do a simple task without screwing something up,” says Tony as he opens the door the rest of the way. He cocks his rifle and sticks its barrel into the area.
Light cascades into the poorly lit room and reveals not just Zak and Timothy, but several bodies in the room. Robby raises his pistols. The moans of hungry throats echo through the room.
“Don’t shoot!” screams Zak.




Just in time. Robby lowers his weapons, realizing the situation. Timothy’s heart is pounding very quickly He and Zak are trapped in the corner of the room opposite of the door. In between them are roughly ten living corpses. Lining the walls of this storage area are stacks upon stacks of propane tanks.
“What were they doing in here!?” screams Zak panicking.
The zombies are slowly approaching. Their arms reach out and their throats moan, wishing to fulfill an undying hunger.
“The zombies or the propane tanks?” questions Timothy trying to distract his thoughts from the teeth that will soon be tearing into his flesh.
“Both.”
The two had walked in the dark room, stumbled for a light switch, found it near the fire exit, and had promptly panicked from that point on.
Zak carefully places his shotgun into the corner, useless in this situation and far too dangerous to even hold loaded in here. Timothy wistfully remembers his cricket splat, leaning against the check-out counter at the front of the store. How could he have been so idiotic as to feel secure for even a second without a weapon? He makes a mental note to never be separated from his handy cricket splat, that is if he survives this. They both search the room desperately for a weapon, anything, but they see only the zombies and the ever-threatening tanks of propane.
“Run and get us a $%#@ing weapon!” screams Zak to Robby and Tony.
“But what?” Tony yells back.
“Something that doesn’t make us go kaboom!” Timothy advises.
“We’re in a $%@ing hardware store! Be imaginative!” Zak adds.
Tony and Robby exit the room. The dead approach, and Timothy backs further into the corner. As he does this, his back brushes against something metal. He reaches around and his fingers grasp the handle of a large fire extinguisher. How had he missed it!?
He tears it off the wall but soon regrets this action. Sirens sound throughout the store and blare out into the street. Zombies happily meandering the roads of Council Grove stop and turn towards this new sound, hoping it will contain a meal. Timothy, choosing to ignore the noise, swings awkwardly like a drunken major leaguer into the face of the nearest corpse. It crumples to the ground and ceases movement. He turns to his left and sees Zak across the room surrounded by three others. He is shoving their hungry mouths away from his flesh, but they are close to succeeding in acquiring a meal. Timothy lobs the extinguisher across towards Zak.
His hand pops into the air and manages to grasp the object. He promptly deals heavy hits to the surrounding bodies. His blows are not hard enough to kill; the zombies are staggering back to their feet. Timothy is pulled back to his own predicament as a corpse falls into him and knocks him to the ground.
The zombie bends down, mouth opening, reaching for Timothy’s throat. He presses his hands up against the creature’s shoulders, but its weight is nearly too much. As a last ditch effort he props the corpse up with his left arm, shoves his right hand into his pocket, pulls out a random pen, and aims carefully as he shoves it deep into the body’s eye. Timothy swears loudly as blood dribbles into his face before he shoves the lifeless corpse off of himself.
“Catch!”
As Timothy stands up he sees a red object whirling towards him. He miraculously catches it and uses its momentum to turn and extend the extinguisher into the nearest zombie’s head.
A now manageable amount of zombies are left standing in the room. Zak catches the fire extinguisher, tossed from Timothy, and whaps it unnecessarily into a nearby creature’s head. As he does this, a loud pounding begins to sound from the fire exit. Matters have gotten worse surrounding the building.
“The damned siren!”
The loud wailing of the fire alarm pounds louder into Timothy’s skull. Zak picks his shotgun up from the corner. A loud crashing sound is heard from the entrance, and the two exit the area. They find Robby and Tony pressing benches up against the doors and windows. This is a futile effort; as they do this arms break through the glass and bodies fall into the store.
Zak yells towards Tony and Robby, “Well thanks for helping!” His voice echoes through the store as he and Timothy sprint down the aisles to the entrance.
“We’re fine if you were wondering?” adds Timothy.
Wasting no time, he grabs his ever-handy cricket splat from the checkout counter and joins the fray. He crushes the heads of the temporarily incapacitated zombies crawling on the floor, Zak fires his shotgun out through the broken windows, and Tony and Robby abandon their barricading and fire along with Zak.
“Where’s the fuse box in this building!?” yells Tony, but, even as he yells this, the lights go out, plunging them into a quiet semidarkness. The siren has dissipated.
“Must have been Sam,” says Timothy. His voice feels odd in the sudden change of sound level. The moans of the living dead are all that echo throughout the building.
“Well, where the #@$# is he?” grunts Robby, pistol whipping a corpse in the face.
A loud rumble emanates from outside through the broken windows. A massive roaring object careens into view. A 16-wheeler parked along a nearby store swerves through most of the undead horde.
The figure of Sam yells a few choice swear words out through the window to the zombies and then resolves to giggling maniacally as he crushes them beneath the sheer weight of his vehicle. He stops the truck and kills the engine. Sam then jumps down from the driver’s seat, yanks the ripcord of a small, gas-powered chainsaw, and begins chopping through the decomposing bodies like an unstoppable wave of violence.
“I’m just not even going to ask,” states an astonished Tony.
Timothy looks behind himself towards the fire exit in the back. The dead have already broken through the door and are making their way down the aisle, arms outstretched. There’s too many.
“That’s our cue to leave,” says Robby, as he jumps through the broken windows and out into the street.
Sam finishes his zombie slaughter and kills the engine of his chainsaw. He throws the weapon into the back of the semi. It lands atop a pile of supplies that he had pulled from the shelves of Ace Hardware previously. Blood drips from the chain and onto the surrounding equipment.
“@#$#ing idiots didn’t even think to prepare a back up plan?” Sam yells as he climbs around into the driver’s seat of the vehicle and starts the engine. “I’m not supposed to be doing the thinking around here.”
Timothy is the last to crawl through the window. He stands in the street as the others cram themselves into the cab of the semi. He moves to join them but stops. Turning around, he stares at the building he is abandoning. He remembers visiting this place with his father to purchase supplies for repairs around the house. This was in a world without fear, a world in which his next and most important problem would be completing his homework assignments. A different world. He sees the building as it is now. The exterior destroyed, blood spattering the ground inside and out, and ruined, disgusting creatures moaning and stumbling around the store. He feels something warm fall upon his foot and look down. He watches a second drip of blood fall from the tip of his gore stained cricket bat.
“Goddamn it” He states simplistically and joins the others.