The Town

Fear gripped me as we drove back into town we had no idea what we would find or how many people had now become zombies. For all we knew we were driving right into a place whose only inhabitants were things that wanted to rip us to pieces and eat us, I felt like a dog in a Chinese restaurant. The town looked worse than it had when we left. The streets were clear enough to drive on but there were more wrecked cars. There were also bodies now some were in their cars still, bloated and rotting in the sun. A lot of them were mangled beyond recognition just dark bloody masses on the ground. I figured that a lot of the ones in the cars had probably shot themselves or something. The ones on the streets had been partially eaten. The smell was terrible our windows were up but the smell came through. The smell reminded me of a time years ago when my dog had died. She was a large black dog that had been with me since I was born and I had been terribly upset by her death. When my parents attempted to bury her they didn’t dig the hole deep enough. A few days later I had gone out to put flowers on the grave and discovered to my horror that she had been partially dug up. I had then grabbed a shovel and spent an hour covering her back up by the time I had finished my hands were bleeding and I had thrown up twice. For weeks the over powering smell of my rooting dog had haunted me an it was at least a month after that before I could bring myself to eat meat.

Mathew was the first to throw up followed by myself and then finally Mitchell. We were lucky enough to get the windows down first. We ended up at Mathew’s house because it was closer than Mitchells. Once we quietly took everything we brought out of the car and went inside. We stayed inside for the rest of the day. I didn’t really like being at Mathews I felt uncomfortable not being in my house and it was strange in the town. The whole place had been bathed in an eerie silence; there were no sounds except us. Mathews house was also creepy it had the distinct feeling of a house that hadn’t been lived in for some time, I don’t think Mathew even felt completely at home. We spent the rest of the day sitting around the house talking about what we should do. We couldn’t agree on what should be our next step. I wanted to just stay put and wait for something to happen Mathews house wasn’t exactly an ideal place to do this in my opinion but it was better than nothing. Mathew sort of agreed with me but he wanted to explore the town a little and try to find some other people. Mitchell wanted to leave the town completely and make our way to a city to see what was going on there. He was convinced that there would have to be some kind of safe house or something somewhere out there.

In the end we never manage to agree on anything and eventually our conversation turned to lighter topics. “You know what we should do.” Mathew said “We should go sneak to a store and steal some alcohol. There are no cops so we can’t get in trouble anymore.”

“Yeah that’s a great idea.” said Mitchell sarcastically “Let’s get hammered while there’s a bunch of zombies running around that what to eat us. I mean it’s not like we’ve messed anything up while were sober so we should get along just fine drunk.”

“It’s better than anything you’ve suggested.” Said Mathew. “I always thought that zombie apocalypses looked fun in the movies and stuff but really there a pain in the a*s. There was a large window in Mathew’s living room that looked out at the street in front of his house. For most of the day we had not seen anything walk by the window. Just as the sun was going down Mitchell suddenly stood up and walked to the window. “Guys come here.” he said Mathew and I stood up and walked over to the window. As I looked out I saw a group of about 50 or more zombies walking down the street.

“Close the curtains.” I said, Mitchell closed them leaving only a small space for us to look out. The zombies continued down the road not stopping to look at the house or anything, until finally they were out of sight.

“Where do you think they’re going?” asked Mathew.

“No idea.” replied “but I think this means we should close all the curtains to night so they can’t see our lights.” We went around the house making sure all the windows were covered before it got dark. When we had finished we went back to the living room where we talked until we started to fall asleep. The next day passed in much the same way. Once again right before sunset 50 or more zombies walked down the road in front of Mathews house. We spent a couple of hours that night talking about what the zombies were doing but none of us had any good ideas. This pattern continued for a few days then our food started to run low. Since everything in the fridge had gone bad we were living off canned and boxed food. After our food got so low we decided we would have to do something about it. The one small store in the town was located only a few streets over from Mathews so we decided to take what we could find there.

We each took a gun Mathew took the twenty gage , we still didn’t trust him with anything more than a single shot. Mitchell took the twelve gage and I took the Luger and also a baseball bat Mathew had. We decided not to take the car to keep the noise down and because we could just steal carts from the store to get the food back. It took us about five minutes to gat form Mathews to the store we walked through alleys mostly attempting to avoid the main street as much as possible. We didn’t see a sign of any living human or zombie on the way there. The alleys we traveled through were completely deserted. The stores door was opened when we got there looking through it we could see that it was extremely dark inside. “Good thing we brought flashlights.” Mitchell said gazing into the darkness.

We walked into the store each of us grabbing a cart as we walk past them. All of us walked off in different directions I walked down the aisle that had chips and stuff. I started taking one everything and putting it in the cart. We had agreed that once when we had filled our carts we met by the front of the store. I was the first one finished; while I was waiting I heard a noise. There was a room that near where I was standing. As a shined my flashlight on the door which was partly opened I heard the noise again it sounded like something moving and it was coming from the room. I grabbed Mathew’s baseball bat out of the cart and walked slowly towards the room. I heard the noise again as I drew nearer to the door. My heart was pounding loudly in my chest and I tried to grip the bat tighter. When I reached the door I kicked it open and shone the light in. The room was a small office filled by a large desk. On the desk there was a computer and lots of papers.

I walked into the office and heard the noise again it sounded like it came from behind the desk. Slowly moving forward I looked over the desk and jumped back, there was a zombie lying on the floor behind the desk. A file cabinet had fallen over on her trapping her. “Dennis what’s wrong.” Mitchell’s voice made me jump and I dropped my flashlight.

“There’s a zombie back here.” I replied. “She’s stuck under a file cabinet.” Mitchell walked in and looked over the desk. “What so you think we should do with it.”

“We should probably kill it.” He said. “That way the store’s safe for when we come back. We should probably use the bat though we don’t want to attract more of them.” I nodded my agreeing with him.

“Do you want to do the honors?” I said offering him the bat.

“No I don’t think I can.” He replied.

“What do you mean? You killed that one back at my house.”

“That was different.” He replied “I shot it and if I hadn’t it would have killed us. I just don’t think I can do it like this.”

“Ok I’ll do it.”

“I’m not going to watch if you don’t mind.” He said.

“No leave if you want.”

“Thanks.” He mumbled and walked form the room. I walked around the desk and looked down at the zombie. She saw me and started struggling to get to me. Her face wore a blank stupid expression. Her eyes were black holes and drool dripped from her mouth that seemed to be rotting around the edges. This isn’t a person I told myself this is a monster. I sat the flashlight down on the edge of the desk so that I still had enough light to aim. I raised the bat over my head and looked down at the dark shape of the zombies head. I took a deep breath and brought the bat down with a crack. Killing the zombie was surprisingly easy, I had simply brought the bat up and down up and down until it stopped moving, until its head was an unrecognizable bloody pulp. Once I had finished I picked up the flashlight and left the room.

Mitchell and Mathew were waiting as a came out of the office. “It’s dead.” I said as I walked form the room.

“Are you ok Dennis?” Mitchell asked.

“Fine let’s just go.”

“You got some blood on you.” Mathew said pointing at my shirt.

“Yeah I know.” We walked home in silence not seeing any sign of zombies on the way. Once back at Mathew’s house we got something to eat and spent the rest of the night talking. About a week went by like this we would wake up and spend the day shut up in Mathew’s house talking. I didn’t mind spending so much time inside I had always considered myself more of an inside person. I could tell it was starting to get Mathew though. As the days went on Mitchell and I continued to entertain ourselves by reminiscing about the old days and making plans for when this was over, but Mathew was growing more restless. He had taken to walking around the house and starring out the windows all the time.

Around 5:00 one day Mitchell had fallen asleep and Mathew was wandering around the house. He walked into the living room and looked out the window for a few minutes before turning to me. “I’m going to the store.” He announced suddenly.

“Mathew you can’t go to the store alone.” I said.

“Yeah I can it’ll be fine I’ll be back in like five minutes.”

“I don’t think this is a good idea.” I replied. “But if you’re going take Mitchell’s gun.”

“I thought you didn’t trust me with anything but a single shot.” He said.

“Well I won’t be anywhere near you so its fine.” I said, Mathew walked from the living room into the hall, he grabbed Mitchells gun that was leaning up against the wall next to the door and left. I stood up and walked over to the window where I watched Mathew walk off down the street. He didn’t walk off in the direction of the store though. He walked off in the opposite direction. He must be going to the gas station I thought to myself as I walked back to my chair and sat down. Now for the first time in a few days I was alone, well not really alone Mitchell was only asleep but I had no one to talk to. As I sat there alone my mind wondered back to the days before all this zombie stuff started. I began to think about Mary, I wondered what had happened to her I really hoped that she had managed to get somewhere safe. As I sat there daydreaming about saving Mary from a horde of zombies and being rewarded with a kiss I fell asleep.

Suddenly I was awakened by a gunshot “What the Hell!” Mitchell screamed jumping up from across the room.

“Mathew!” I said “He went out.”

“What!’ Yelled Mitchell, “How could you let him go out there alone.”

“Well I let him take a good gun.” I said, there was another gunshot and the door opened. Mathew ran in slammed the door behind him and locked every lock.

“Mathew what the Hell.” Mitchell demanded.

“I was really bored so I went to the gas station to look for some gum the store didn’t have the kind I like.” said Mathew breathing hard. “I made it to the gas station and on the way back I ran into a group of them.” I could hear something pounding on the door as Mathew talked. I walked to the window looked out and gasped there were about 50 or more zombies standing in front of the house.