Chapter 4: Single-Player

8 months ago

“So what is the Fort anyway?” I was the one driving which was a little strange considering that I didn't have the slightest idea where I was going.
“Turn left here,” my boss, Hutch, said. He filled the passenger side of the big truck and sipped from a sixty-four ounce Pepsi. The heat worked better than the radio, but we listened to the truck's iffy stereo anyway. Queen was cutting in and out. Another one bites the dust occasionally biting the dust itself. It didn't matter, anything was preferable to the Christmas music that was playing in every building in town.
“S'like a military base or something?” I'd lived in town my whole life and never heard anything called The Fort. I'd begun thinking of the place in captial letters.
“Huh? No, just a wearhouse.”
“Oh,” I said. When we were kids we called our clubhouses “forts”. I had pictured a magnificient tree house, all Swiss Family Robinson with rope ladders and multiple levels of hammocks and swings.
I noticed that we'd gone a few miles out of town into a more secluded wooded area. In town, the trees were encased in ice that looked like glass, out here the forest was so tight, it looked like the side of a glaciar.
“Up here on the left,” Hutch said.
I still didn't see anything, but I turned off the main road onto a bumpier side road that led deeper into the sharp, white woods. There was no tracks in the snow on the road, so I wasn't sure at anytime whether I'd meandered into the woods. I wasn't used to driving the truck in the winter yet, so my arms were tense and I'd started to sweat, imagining rolling the truck down one of the steep, icy hills that flanked the road. Another mile passed like that before we reached a clearing. The Fort.
It was even better than my imaginary tree house.
I could see why they called it The Fort. The reinforced concrete structure was larger on top than on the bottom giving it a Fort Apache, Garrisson-style look. The top level had a few rectangular windows, but the lower level only had the one loading bay door.
It looked like a helluva place to repel an invasion.
Or, at least, a good place to hide while the invasion raged outside.
I backed the truck up to the loading bay door and killed the engine. Like a human avalanche, Hutch slid out of the cab of the truck. I could hear the fresh snow crunching under his feet. He went around and unlocked the big door with the key card.
“Don't let me lose that. There's only two of them and I'd lose my dick if it wasn't in my wife's pocket.” Hutch had the worst memory of any pre-elderly person I knew.
As we unloaded some expensive-looking medical equiptment, he explained that The Fort used to belong to the Department of Natural Resources, but that the university acquired it. I could really see it. If the building had been built out of Lincon Logs, it would look like an old-timey ranger station. “We only put valuable stuff in here,” he said,”like this whateverthefuckitis.” He patted the machine of uncertain purpose with his meaty hand. “'Cept nobody ever comes back and gets the stuff, so it just sits here.”
I looked around the inside of the enormouse builidng. No windows on the first floor, only one door that apparenly only had two keys, secluded and spacious.
Be it ever so apocalyptic, there's no place like home.
I was already planning how to move stuff around, the place had an old forklift parked in one corner, when Hutch said he was ready to go. He'd left the key card sitting on the top of the machine of uncertain purpose when he gone to relieve himself. I picked it up as we headed out the door. As the snow started falling again, I tried to decide if it would be easier to try to make a copy or just lose this one. Hutch slapped the button on the way out and the large steel door rattled down behind us. Driving out would at least be easier than driving in had been, I had my own tracks to follow.

Later that day, I had my target shooting course. I aimed my pistol and cracked off a shot. I slipped my safety goggles off and inspected the damage. I'd hit the square paper target, but just barely.
I sighed. I'd cultivated a naïve trust in formal education. I felt that if you wanted to learn something you took a class. Practice makes perfect. I don't know. Maybe if you start young enough. I was facing the sad fact that I had absolutely no natural talent for shooting a pistol. Everything I had accomplished this semester had come from constant practice. I'd gotten into Advanced Marksmanship because there were six spots and only four applicants, all of them ROTC. Practice made good enough, but that was far from perfect.
I retrieved the target and stood in the firing range booth staring at it. One of the ROTC Action figures said something to one of the others about my feeling sorry for shooting it. That was the same guy who, when he found out that there was a non-ROTC female who had signed up for next semester's Advanced Marksmanship course, said that he didn't think it was legal for lesbos to carry guns. They said she had been permitted to take the class without the prerequisite. She must be good with a gun. If she was a lesbian, than she must be a killer lesbian. More power to her. The more tourists in this course the better. I kept staring at the target. It was kind of funny. It probably did look like I was sad that I had to put Ol' Yeller down. I mean...
Oh, shit.
I pulled out a black sharpie from my backpack and on either side of the center of the target drew two huge bloodshot eyes. Underneath the center, I drew a mouth with blood dripping from broken teeth. I returned the targed, reloaded my pistol and sank four out of five shots between the eyes.
I realized that I had been screaming as I fired.
Turning to get my things, I noticed that the Action Figures were staring at me.
I passed the time on the bus ride home the way I always did: counting people. There were thirteen people on the bus, not counting me. I kept a rolling tally of the people I saw outside on the frozen sidewalks. Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen. Twenty. Twenty-three in Starbucks. One at the ATM. That made twenty-four. I made a gun of my hand and carefully shot each one in the head. Bang. Bang. Bang. The bus window fogged up with my breadth. I wiped it off with my sleeve and continued the count.
Later at home, I shrugged my winter coat off and flicked the television on for background noise while I microwaved a Hungryman dinner. I'd given up my double-single dorm room and got a late lease off-campus apartment. It was not much bigger than my dorm had been, but it gave me a little more privacy. I took a can of Dr. Pepper out of the fridge and opened it.
After reading the dead-dead article, I'd meant to follow the news more, to keep up with what was going on, but the news was like watching LOST if you hadn't been following it, it was hard to just jump in and understand what was going on.
CNN was talking about a kid, ten-year-old Steve, who had been missing for several days in a Wisconsin snowstorm. Apparently, he had fallen through the ice on a frozen pond and drowned. The pond had frozen back over and his remains had only been discovered when a local youth league hockey team swept the ice clean to play. They showed a cell phone snapshot of the boy, frozen like an insect in blue amber.
I switched the channel.
Fox News. Authorities in Southern Florida were currently searching for a man who had murdered three women. Authorities had been at a loss to explain how the suspect had gained access to these women's apartments as the buildings had been old, but secure, until a witness described seeing a man, with a clipboard and a hardhat with a cable TV logo it, entering the premises on three different occasions. The witness said that nothing seemed odd at the time, even though the apartment buildings did not actually have cable.
I flipped the TV off.
I sat there for a moment drinking my Dr. Pepper.
I flipped the TV back on.
Fox News was still talking about the Florida killer and his clipboard.
I couldn't help but grin. There were many important lessons to be learned from serial killers.
The next day, after Hutch and Ben had left for the afternoon, I retrieved the truck keys from the board and headed out to the back lot where the trucks were parked.
I had been trying to get into several first aid classes, but they fill up fast, even the half-semester ones. I got a book out of the library and started making a list of supplies that I would likely need.
The University Medical Center was an uninspired block of Indiana limestone. I parked the truck back by the loading dock. I took several deep breaths trying to calm myself and then, very calmly, hopped out of the truck.
A security guard stood before me.
I might have peed a little.
“Hey, man,” the guard said. “You running late?”
“Yeah,” I heard my inner serial killer say. “My boss is a total asshole, though, so don't say anything.” I felt bad. Hutch is a really nice guy.
“Heard that.” The guard smiled, producing a pack of cigarettes from jacket. As the snow started falling, he stepped into the windbreak provided by my truck and lit up. “You know where you're going, right?”
“Oh, yeah,” I said, holding my empty clipboard up.
He waved me on with his empty hand.
I got my hand truck out of the back and headed inside. I had only been in the cold for a minute, but I couldn't stop shivering even after I got inside the building. I passed an employee that was pushing a laundry cart to a utility elevator. I nodded to him and waved with my clipboard. He returned a bored expression.
It took me twenty minutes of wandering to find the supply room and I'd almost given up when I turned the corner and found it. At University Storage we only ever moved equiptment, furniture storage containers. We didn't move supplies usually. They were dropped directly to the Medical Center and stored there. That was two things to remember. First, stick to regular schedule. Second, figure out the layout on a legitimate trip, so that when you come back later you'll know where to go. Case the joint, bitch.
The supply room wasn't where the nurses, doctors and medical professionals got there supplies from. They got their stuff from the supply closets up on the medical floors. The stuff just sat down here until the upper floors need restocking. It would be forever before anybody noticed this stuff missing, if ever.
I looked over the pallets and then took one of everything. Rubber gloves, syringes, compresses, bandages, first aid kits and a defibrillator. I didn't yet know what to do with it, or even how I would, uh, defibrillate myself without help, if it came to that, but I had my book. I would have to figure it out.
I stacked the supplies as neatly on the hand truck as I could, making it look as unified a pile as possible.
“Excuse me,” a nurse said, startling me.
“I have an invoice,” I said, holding up my clipboard.
“How's that working out for you?” She grabbed a case of rubber gloves and disappeard down the hallway.
I stood there for a minute. Was I really doing this?
“Yes,” I said out loud. I liked the decisive sound of my voice in the supply closet. I sounded like I knew what I was doing. I'd listen to me, if I weren't me. Good enough, I took the stuff and headed for the truck. The security guard was gone. Without warming up the truck or clearing the windshield properly, I sped out of the parking lot.
I stopped three blocks away and, with my hands shaking, scraped the snow off the window and let the cab warm up. The hard part was over. I just need to take the stuff to The Fort, drop it off and get the truck back. My adrenaline had been pumping so hard that it made my hands, now numb from the cold, hurt. I held them hard against my chest. I waited for the feeling to return to my fingers.
Finding the turnoff wasn't difficult after it was pointed out to me. I'd been driving past it my whole life and never realized that there was anything even back there.
The constantly falling, miserable snow had covered our tracks from the previous days trip, so I slowed to a creep to navigate the barely visible road. I flipped the high beams on, figuring no one could see them from the road and there was no one to see them from the The Fort.
One thing that I had not worked into my overall strategy was the cold. If the situation blew up during the winter, which was entirely possible, that I was completely unprepared. I would have to think about gas-powered heater, warm clothes, maybe some blankets...
Something darted out in the dark.
I slammed on the breaks. The wheels slid. The truck spun.
“Fuckfuckfuckfuck...”
The road out to The Fort was too narrow. Halfway through the spin, the truck left the road.
I pulled back uselessly on the steering wheel like a fighter pilot trying to pull out of a nosedive. “...Fuckfuckfuck....”
The truck lurched forward. The headlights lit snow blasted tree trunks. “...fuckfuckfuck...”
The truck stopped. “...fuck.”
I was still mostly on the road.
The truck started to slide forward. “Fuck?”
The truck tilted forward like a seesaw. I leaned back in my seat like that was going to make any difference.
My right foot ached with the pressue I had down on the break pedal, but I was terrified to let go of it. I gently dropped the truck into reverse and, as carefully as I could, moved my foot to the gas. I gave it some gas.
The truck responded with the dentist's drill whine of a tire sliding on ice. “Fuck.” I killed the engine, but left the lights on. I put my gloves on and opened the truck door. A cold blast of winter took my breath away. Trying to not fall on my face, I climbed from the tilted truck. Frozen snow covered the hillside and I slipped, catching the trunk of a tree to keep myself from sliding down into the dark cold at the bottom of the hill beyond the headlights. On my hands and knees, I climbed back up to the road.
The darkness was illuminated with a bluish light from the snow, giving the whole scene the look of a photographic negative. On another day, it might have seemed really beautiful. Not tonight.
“Fuck.” The truck was off the road with its rear tires in the air.
Okay, I was in a truck I was supposed to be using that was filled with stolen medical supplies and I was trespassing. I walked around the truck.
In a little hatchback, I could have hopped on the back and maybe gotten the wheels back down on the road. Even then, though, I would need someone to help me back the car up.
Ben.
I yanked the glove off my hand with my teeth and pulled the cellphone out of my pocket. I had not told Ben about any of this and wasn't sure if I could trust him. He could be flaky at times and I didn't know if he would take it seriously. I put the phone back into my pocket. I wiped my sweaty face with my bare hand. There was no other option. I took the phone back out. A friend will help you move, but a best friend will help you move a body. I'd only known him for a semester, I didn't know if we had that kind of relationship. I put the phone back in my pocket.
I walked around the truck again, stomping my feet to fight the numbness. The cold had gotten in to my sweat and was freezing me. I looked up at the dark, square shape of The Fort. I wondered if there was anything up there that could help me.
I marched up in the dark and the cold, swiped the card in the lock and stepped back.
Nothing happened.
I swiped the card again. Nothing happened again.
I pulled out my phone, flipped it open and used it as a flashlight. I swiped the card again. The small led screen red ENTER PIN. There was space for four digits.
“PIN? You gotta be fucking kidding me.” I didn't like the sound of my voice. It sounded like a guy who had no idea what he was doing. I would not follow this guy.
I kicked the snow, through a punch. In raw frustration, I kicked the snow again. Kicked the wall. What would Hutch use as a pin? There must be hundreds of possible combinations. What would Hutch use? His birthday? Don't know it. Anniversary? Hutch forget his anniversary and got in deep shit with Mrs. Hutch.
He forgot his anniversary. He forgets everything.
I typed: one, two, three, four.
The door motor kicked to life and the door started to rise. I ducked underneath it as it went up and flipped on the lights.
I saw the forklift before I'd even stood up all the way.
It took me an hour before I figured out how to get the forklift running and it was harder to manage on the snow than the truck was, but I managed to wedge it behind the truck and lower the fork down on the back. It put the weight of the fork on the back of the truck enough to get the wheels on the road.
I climbed back into the truck, started it up, dropped it in reverse and ever so gently back up. If, somehow, I backed over the forklift and sent it skidding down the hill on the other side, I was just going to go off into the snowy woods and freeze to death like that Steve kid in Wisconsin.
The truck wheels caught and I heard the truck bump the forklift as I backed up. Just enough.
I jumped out of the truck. The forklift was still on the road, though it had been scooted backward by the truck, but it didn't matter, because the truck was back on the road.
I returned the forklift, unloaded the truck and stashed the medical supplies inside the empty space of the machine of uncertain purpose, which had a coffin sized hole in it. I thought distantly, as I pushed the boxes inside, that it might be parts of a CAT scan machine. I still had to take the truck back.
By the time I got home, it was nearly three AM. I slumped on the couch with a cold Dr. Pepper, when what I really wanted was a coffee. I didn't have a coffee machine, coffee, a pot, a mug or any sugar, so that wasn't going to happen. I would have to remember to get that stuff when I went to the University Food Service. I'd heard a report about a meat recall due to E. coli, that made me think. E. coli was the shit bacteria. It made people jump. Shit always made people jump. When I went to get food, I would say,”Boo! E. coli! Gimme your tater-tots!”
I laughed, but didn't like the sound of my voice in the silence of my apartment.
I flicked the television on. CNN was still flogging the dead kid, frozen solid, spread eagle like an eternal snow angel. I flipped the TV off again. I couldn't face the kid.
The apocalypse had just been a hobby, but, tonight I stepped up my game.
The next step I had avoided for fear of drawing unwanted attention, now I saw no other way of moving forward without it.
I needed another pair of hands. I needed a partner.

Chapter 3: Flight Simulator

I was conscious for several seconds before it occurred to me to be surprised that I was waking up at all. Lying face down in the street, my head hard against the curb, I could taste blood. A broken tooth clicked in my mouth when I tried to spit it out.
How was I still alive?
I tried to life my face from the hot pavement, found that I couldn't and settled back down.
I was alive wasn't I?
I must be, I thought, I hurt too much to be resting in peace.
Struggling again to get to my feet, I managed to get my hands underneath me and it was then that I made an important discovery.
Someone had bitten my finger off.
Son of a bitch.
Biting my lip, I managed to roll myself up onto the curb. My wounded hand ripped free of the sticky maroon stain with an audible squelch. I moaned as if the sound itself had hurt.
For awhile, I just stayed like that, cradling my injured hand on my belly and squinting against the sunlight. The July heat was oppressive even as low in the sky as the sun was. It must be late, I thought. How long had I been out?
How was I still alive?
Why had the zombies left me alone?
Elise.
I rolled over on my belly, trying to push myself to my feet and cradle my hand at the same time. I collapsed on my face. I scrambled to my knees, got to my feet, managed a few steps and then nearly collapsed again, catching myself on the brick facade of a nearby building.
My legs buckled.
“Elise!”
I wiped my face with my good hand. She was gone. Safe, I thought, but gone. I, on the other hand, was completely and thoroughly fucked. I would have laughed if I hadn't thought that the pain of it would dump me back on the asphalt.
I blinked away the fat, burning sunspots in my eyes and strained to take in my surroundings. I'd run three city blocks from the gas station and lost the gun about half way. I'd have to find it. My body ached with the thought of crawling around on the hot pavement between abandoned cars.
I sighed and looked around some more.
Little shops and business lined the street. An old-fashioned movie theater with a big light bulb lined marquee sat at the end of the street. A black plastic R hung alone from the sign. I wondered absently what movie had been the last to play before the end of the world. I hoped it has been something good. The last movie I'd watched was Shaun of the Dead and the irony was not lost on me.
About the time I started thinking about finding some water, I noticed the zombie.
He'd been standing there the whole time, I think, watching me. It stood in an unnatural stance. His right femur was broken low near the ankle and he held himself up on the broken end of the bone, his foot flopped to the side like an empty shoe dropped on the ground. He was the one wearing the same Alice in Chains T-shirt as me. Creepy.
My heart beat hard against the inside of my chest and I think I felt blood running down my leg. At least, I hoped it was blood. I carefully reached for the nylon holster at my side, but found it empty. Damn force of habit.
Fight or flight. No gun equaled no fight and I guess flight was left, but I didn't think I'd be taking off anytime soon, I resorted, then to the only option I had left. “What the fuck are you looking at?”
It said nothing, only tilted its head quizzically. I noticed that it had no nose.
“Gotcha nose,” I said, holding up my good hand thumb between middle finger and index. I laughed then, mostly out of terror and useless adrenaline, and felt a stitch of pain in my chest. I coughed, wondering if I'd cracked a rib or punctured my lung.
I watched the zombie and he watched me.
If he rushed me, slow as he probably was on a broken leg, he would catch me and, wounded as I was, he would probably kill me.
I'd never see Elise again.
Glancing around the street, I looked for something I could use as a weapon. Nothing. Apparently, I'd chosen the cleanest street in America to make my last stand.
I clenched my good fist, pushing myself off the wall and to my feet. I'd spent a few semesters in self-defense courses, but a kick in the balls doesn't stop a zombie. Close quarters combat would only serve to get yourself bitten. I spread my feet shoulder's width apart. I hoped I could deliver a kick hard enough to knock him down. Maybe, I could stomp his skull and...
The zombie turned and walked away.
I stood there, mouth hanging open, watching him go. He never even looked back. After a few minutes, he was out of sight. He moved with the quiet determination of a man who had shit to do.
Pretty fucking anticlimactic, I thought, trying not to shit my pants, giggle, or both.
I needed to find that gun.
And I did, after nearly an hour of searching. It had gone farther than I'd expected. I wondered if I hadn't kicked in when I dropped it. Lucky I didn't shoot myself in the leg.
Damn, I was thirsty.
I limped back to the gas station and found several bottles of warm Coca-Cola in a dead cooler. I drank one of them in one gulp, belched and drank the other one slowly as I ate a pack of cup cakes from the snack shelf. It had been mostly picked clean except for one pack on account of them having been stepped on. Tasted just fine to me. I would have to find more food, though.
After bandaging my hand with what I found in a first aid kid and downing a half-dozen Tylenol, I began to feel halfway human again.
I left the gas station and immediately wished I hadn't.
Several zombies milled around just beyond the gas pumps.
I slipped back into the gas station and crouched down, the natural pain-killing adrenaline and Tylenol overdose smoothing out the rough spots.
I slid the pistol out of the holster and just watched.
Four zombies, none of them my noseless friend, stood around a fifth. At first, I thought the fifth member of the little group was actually a living human being. He movements were very animated. He swung his fists at the other zombies, kicked at them which did nothing but make me grateful I had not tried to Kung-Fu that other zombie.
When the fifth zombie turned, though, I could see that his chest cavity had been torn open, exposing several internal organs. He was fresh, but he was definitely dead.
What the hell was he doing?
He fell on one of them, pounded his fists against the things already smashed face. Finally, he dropped his arms to his sides and slumped his shoulders in an all too human gesture of defeat and exhaustion.
What was I seeing?
The other zombies let the fifth one vent for awhile, and then they knocked him to the ground and tore one of his arms off. Another one bit into his face, tearing away chunks of flesh and ultra-white shards of broken bone. It must have bitten into his brain because all of a sudden he stopped kicking.
I crouched there, mouth hung open for the second time today. What had I just seen? Zombies didn't attack or kill other zombies. This made no sense at all.
Staying low, I slipped back into the gas station and concealed myself behind a sunglass tree.
Too much new information. I didn't have the time or concentration to process all of this properly. Elise wouldn't believe what I'd seen.
Elise. I'm going to die here, I thought. I felt my jaw quiver. I didn't want to die alone, out here, with those things.
I felt my eyes burn.
No.
Man up, I told myself. You can do this. One step at a time.
The first step was to get out of the gas station. There must be a back way out. I turned and came face to face with Noseless.
I fell on the floor, scrambled back until I hit an ice cream freezer.
He sprang toward me clumsy but quick.
I raised the gun, trying to aim at his head.
He came at me until his forehead was practically against the barrel of my pistol.
If I pulled the trigger, the others would hear and come after me. I could catch them in the doorway, maybe take them at point blank.
My hand tensed.
He reached out and pinched the front of my t-shirt. He tugged it gently and then released it.
The gun shook in my hand.
His milky, bloodshot eyes stared at me.
“Eventually, I guess, the maggots will get us both,” I said and lowered my gun.
He drew away from me, turned and left.
By the time I got to my feet, the quartet of zombies outside had moved on. I watched out the window for a long time as night fell.
Second step was to find a car. One of the cars in the street had to have the keys in it. When the street was sufficiently darkened, I crept out and started searching from car to car, favoring ones that were either near the edge of the jam or at least not too wedged in.
The dome light flicked on in the first car I checked, startling me. I was more careful as I went. Finally, I found one, a late model Toyota Corolla, parked at the edge of the crowd. The gas tank was empty, but the keys were in the ignition. The driver's side window was smashed. I tried not to think about it. I dropped the car in neutral and pushed it quietly to the pumps. I pocketed the car keys and quickly and quietly filled the tank. “These gas prices are killing me,” I said to no one in particular. I just need to catch up to them. They had a huge head start, but I thought I could catch up with them.
Returning to the car, I fished the keys out of my pocket. I found something else in there too. I took it out and stared stupidly at it like I had no idea what it was.
If it were still possible for me to be stunned, to be horrified, for the would to spin out from underneath me and leave me falling, then that is what I felt.
“Fuck.” In my shaking hand, I held the only key card that opened the only door to The Fort. Elise and the others couldn't get in. They were as good as dead.
I got in the car and flew.

Chapter 2: Solitaire

One year ago

I never introduced myself did I? I guess it doesn't matter much now. I'm Dave. I'm a college student at a large Indiana college and my major is currently undecided. I live in mortal fear of choosing the wrong path, so I choose no path at all.
I came to a liberal arts college so I could sit in the air conditioned lecture halls and think big thoughts, but the only big thought, I mean my biggest thought, came to me at work. To help pay for all my big thinking, I got a job with University Storage driving a box truck. The university is as big as a small town and all the different supplies, furniture, records and assorted shit has to be moved and stored. Sitting in my work shirt, my name stitched over one pocket, waiting for something to need to be stored, moved or otherwise attended to, the end of the world occurred to me.
People will tell you that they saw this all coming. People, from the President of the United States down to some poor bastard locked in his hall closet with one shotgun shell and zombies murdering his family outside, will tell you that they knew this, or something like this was bound to happen. Super germs and particle accelerators and cloned sheep would all lead to this.
I say bullshit.
It doesn't take a genius to know that the ship is sinking if they're feet are already getting wet. It doesn't take a genius to know something is wrong when, in lieu of flowers, people start bringing rifles to funerals.
I saw this coming before the ship had sailed, before the baggage was stowed or the cruise even planned. I saw this coming before they even smashed a champagne bottle off the bow.
I saw this coming when somebody, somewhere decided that dead didn't exactly mean dead anymore.
“Dave?” Ben, surfing the web on the other computer in the office, probably not porn, never porn, before he came to college he shared the family computer with his seven-year-old sister, never porn, but he does make up for lost time on the internet by marathon research sessions and a prodigious video tape smut collection. He's the only person in the dorm who owns a VCR. Sad thought that it is, if I have a best friend, its him.
“Yeah.”
“Dave.”
I plucked my iPod ear bud out of the left side. Alice in Chains heavy now only in one ear. “What?”
“You want to hear something weird?” Ben constantly needed to share little bits of internet plankton on which he'd filter fed.
“No,” I said. “Solitaire.”
“This article says that some scientists...”
“Solitaire.”
“That some scientists...”
“Some? Who is 'some'?”
“For the sake of the conversation?”
“I don't want to be part of the conversations.”
“For the sake of the argument, then?”
“Are we arguing now?”
“Finland.”
“Finland?”
“Yes, Finlandian scientists...”
“Finnish.”
“I'm trying to.” I can't tell if he's joking.
“No, I'm saying scientists, or anyone really, from Finland are Finnish, not Finlandian. What's your major again?”
“Video production.”
“Well, I guess you're forgiven, then.”
Silence.
“So,” I said, “Ben?”
“Yeah.”
“What have the Finlandian scientists got to say?”
“I'm not going to tell if you if you are going to be like that.”
“Sorry.”
“The Finlandians are a proud people, Dave, especially the scientific community.”
“Sorry. Tell me.”
“What do you say?”
“Please, tell me.”
“What is the magic word?”
“Please fucking tell me.”
“That's better,” Ben said, settled back into his seat, refered to the computer screen. “These scientists are saying that dead might not mean dead-dead.”
“Dead-dead? What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“There's dead...”
“Yes, I'm familiar with the concept.”
“And then there's dead-dead.”
“You've really cleared this up for me, Ben, the scientific community owes you a real debt of gratitude.”
“Whoa,” Ben said.
I glanced up for the first time from my game, smiled. “Did those crazy Finns find another flavor of dead?”
“No...”
“Really most sincerely dead? Grateful Dead? Night of the Living...”
“With modern resuscitation technology we may have to change the scientific and medical definition of death.”
“Dead-dead?”
“Dead-dead. In fact, considering these recent changes in the criteria for death...”
“'The dead-line' if you will. This isn't on Wikipedia, is it?”
“That we may have buried people who could have been saved.”
Silence.
“Oh, shit, Grandma,” Ben said and laughed. “Oh, well.”
I wasn't laughing, though. My parents were killed in a car crash when I was in grade school. Dead-dead?
I dumped solitaire and Googled “Finnish death science”
The results were several articles about the recent tragic death of a Finnish physicist. He died in a car crash. Ironic, but not relevant. “What are you looking at?”
“My bad.”
“What?”
“The scientists aren't in Finland.”
“Where then?”
“That's weird,” Ben said, “They're up in Indy.”
Indianapolis. An hour away. I found the article.
“I got class,” Ben said, gathering up his backpack.
I was already gone, lost in the article. “Yeah, later.”
An hour of link-hopping later, I slumped back in my seat. New resuscitation techniques. Advanced. Cutting edge. I should have been excited. I mean, I was, just not in the good way. Not in the “imagine all the people who will be saved” way. More like the fight or flight way. The “how far dead, how long dead is dead-dead.”
That's when I saw it all coming.
I dug the catalog of classes out of my back pack, flipped through the pages. Target shooting. Riflery. Wilderness survival. Advanced Self-defense.
For a liberal arts university, it is surprising how many combat classes there are.
After several hours of assembling the best schedule this side of Marine Corp boot camp, I slumped back in my chair again.
A bad thing was coming and I was going to be ready. I had avoided making decisions for fear of ruining my life, now I found myself making decisions to try and save it. As I locked up the office and headed home, there was one thing of which I was certain.
I was no longer undecided.

Chapter 1: First Person Shooter

I got bit by a zombie.
You may be thinking that I brought it on myself, did something stupid, but I didn't. I don't take those kinds of chances. I don't take risks period. I'm just not that kind of person.
I saw a guy once, after all this started, I mean, when it got really bad, I saw this guy chasing a zombie with a samurai sword.
A samurai sword. Akira Kurosawa meets George Romero on the way to this guy's funeral. Needless to say, it ended badly, but for three whole seconds, he looked cool as hell. For three whole seconds, the human race stood up and seemed to be saying Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Cool as hell, chasing this zombie down the street, blade flashing in the sunlight. Three seconds.
Three seconds and then, well, fuck Dylan Thomas and fuck the guy with the samurai sword.
He missed the head-shot, sunk the blade into the dead guy's shoulder. Trying to free the blade, which just would not budge, he missed the three creeping up on him.
I could have yelled at that moment, warned the guy, maybe fired off a couple of shots.
I did nothing.
And I may have mentioned this before, but I don't take chances.
Yelling at this guy, maybe would have saved his miserable and yet somehow inspirational life, but it might have attracted unwanted attention to me. Killed us both. Bigger risk, though, would have been if I actually saved him, a guy willing to chase a zombie with nothing but a mail order samurai sword. I save him today, he repays me tomorrow by getting me killed. No thanks. I have things to do, people to see.
That was days ago, though. I have new problems now.

“Man, these gas prices are killing me,” Rodney joked for the fourth time in thirty gallons. Rodney was a big guy in a ball hat that never left his head and a t-shirt with the sleeves cut off. He looked natural pumping gas. He smiled a lot, but still intimidated me with his size. I'm tall enough, don't get me wrong, but the man easily had two-hundred pounds on me and it all looked like muscle. Scary the Cable Guy, my wife and I called him when he wasn't around. Which, believe me, wasn't often enough.
Suzie, his wife, laughed. A high, shrill cackle that bounced off every wall and seemed to echo down the street and right out of town.
“Keep it down,” I said, scanning the empty street around the deserted gas station. Plenty of abandoned cars jammed together, but no bodies. It took us an hour to move enough cars to get the truck up to the pump.
“Don't you tell me to shut up!” Suzie stood tall and gangly like a baby giraffe on ice skates. Her bleach blond hair had grown dark roots and been pulled into the tightest ponytail I'd ever seen. She wore a pink tank top that displayed the large Q tattooed across her cleavage.
“I didn't tell you to shut up, Suzie, just, please, keep it down...”
“Did he or did he not just tell me to shut the fuck up?”
Rodney shrugged his sunburned shoulders. “Don't pull me into your crazy shit.”
I sighed, rubbing my face with my hand. The pistol hung at my side as heavy as a brick. She took this as a surrender and launched into her victory speech.
“That's right,” she said, “I'm a bitch and I know it.”
“We all know it,” my wife, Elise, said emerging from the gas station office carrying a cardboard Penzoil box full of supplies, a package of Hostess cupcakes resting on top. “And now they know it, too.”
We all turned to look.
Three zombies moved toward us, slipping silently between the tangled maze of parked cars.
Elise dropped the box into the back of the truck, handed me the cupcakes and stepped into a clearing between two nearly identical SUV's, pulling her pistol from the holster at the small of her back. “You ready?” She had somehow transformed from a poetry writing, hippie chick to Sydney Bristow in the space of one intense year. Her long brown hair had been cut down to a manageable length and slim, lithe figure was now cut with delicate muscle.
“Yup,” I said, setting the cupcakes down with one hand while bringing my pistol up in the other. We both settled down on one knee, like I did when I proposed, except this time I have a gun, not a ring, though I'm calmer now then I was then. We take careful aim as the three dead men move closer. The middle one shambled on a smashed leg and moved slower than the other two.
“Left,” she says, calling her shot.
“Right.”
“Now,” Elise whispered and the simultaneous shots went off in one flat crack. Two zombies drop.
“Holy shit,” Suzie says. “Look at that one, Dave, he's got the same shirt as you.”
He does. The thing is wearing an old Alice In Chains T-shirt. “Huh, that's creepy.”
“I got him,” Suzie said, whipping her Tec-9 out of her purse and, without aiming sprayed the street. The gun was too heavy for her, but she wouldn't take a smaller one.
It takes a special kind of marksmanship to lay down that much fire and hit nothing at all.
One bullet popped a windshield, spider webbing the safety glass.
Another bullet rang off a stop sign.
The rest went into a store front church. The doors had been boarded. The painted glass collapsed releasing the congregation into the full sunlight of the afternoon.
“Oh, shit,” Rodney said, dropping the pump on the ground.
“Get in the truck,” I said.
A dozen of the less recently deceased poured out of the store front church. The smell makes my eyes water from nearly a block away.
“You get in, “Elise said, drawing aim on the closest one, a blue haired old lady dressed in what looked like an enormous doily. Crack. The woman fell.
“I'm not leaving you,” I said. I took aim on an onrushing parishioner. Squeezed off a shot and hit nothing. Did I say something about a special kind of marksmanship?
Elise dropped him with her next shot. “I'm a better shot and...”
The truck pulled away.
“C'mon,” Rodney shouted, slamming the breaks on. “Time to go.”
I scooped Elise up in my arms. Her small frame weighed nothing and my pumping adrenaline lifted her up and dumped her into the back of the truck. I turned to cover our escape, but her boot thumped twice on the bed of the pick-up as she rolled.
The truck sped away.
Rodney must have taken the thumps as the universal “all clear drive away” signal.
I ran without looking behind me.
Elise steadied her gun and aimed, seeming to be aiming right at me.
The gun cracked and I flinched, tripping on the curb, dropping the pistol. Going down hard, I tried to catch myself. The pavement dug into my outstretched palms. I stumbled back to my feet and tried to catch the truck as it slowed to maneuver the maze of parked cars.
I ran.
“Come on, Dave,” Elise screamed. “Don't look behind you, honey. Just run!”
I looked behind me.
The zombie sunk its teeth into my left shoulder.
I fell.
The world spun as the hoard of zombies struck me, tripped over my fallen body, grabbed at my clothes, my hair, my eyes.
The truck screeched to a halt, as Elise dove from the back.
Rodney was out of the truck almost as fast, scooping her up in his huge arms. I saw Suzie slipping into the driver's seat as Rodney pulled the hysterically screaming Elise into the back.
The trucks tires screeched as it rocketed out of town. Leaving me.
I felt teeth all over.