Zombie Apocalypse Serial #2 Read online

  Zombie Apocalypse Serial

  Book Two

  by

  Ivana E. Tyorbrains

  Copyright 2012

  Episode 2 – The Biggest Buffoons On The Planet

  Caleb Conway

  I met Sabrina in sophomore English class. Our teacher put us in adjacent desks, and when I sat down Sabrina turned to me and said hi.

  I nearly puked.

  Sophomore year is a scary time. All the posing you’ve done since middle school suddenly gets real come sophomore year. People aren’t joking about sex anymore. They’re doing it. By sophomore year, an exotic-looking black girl like Sabrina, a girl who smells like coconut and gives you a boner every time she walks by—this isn’t some novelty. This a possibility, a creature who is just as curious and alive as you are, and may well give it up to somebody before the year is through.

  Just seeing her makes you wonder if that somebody could be you, and you freak out a little.

  I convinced myself that Sabrina’s somebody wasn’t me and never could be. Sabrina was a grand prize babe, her shiny black skin, her bright green eyes, the way her teeth just popped like a flashbulb when she smiled…she was a girl who dated quarterbacks and wrestling captains, not a loser who sat around plucking on his guitar.

  Sabrina and I sat together for sophomore English all year long. The next year we sat next to each other in Spanish. We were together for World History during senior year. She said hi to me in the halls. She wrote her phone number in my yearbook.

  I was such a putz. The girl was writing her phone number in my yearbook, but I was so convinced that I was out of her league that I never once considered picking up the phone and calling her.

  After graduation, Sabrina went to UTEP on a volleyball scholarship. I piddled around with a couple rock bands.

  Sabrina and I met up at the ten-year reunion. She asked me out. At the end of our first date she told me she always thought I was cute and wondered why I wouldn’t give her the time of day.

  “Because you were a prom queen and I was a screwup,” I told her.

  “Well, now I’m a single mom and you’re doing alright for yourself as far as I can see.”

  But I wasn’t doing alright. I was a struggling musician with a day job at a call center. I decided that night to become the person Sabrina thought me to be. I hung up my guitar. I focused on my day job and two months later I got my first promotion. Six months after that I got promoted again.

  Now I’m making good money and Sabrina and I are talking about moving in together. In fact, the day before Sabrina got the letter that changed everything, she and I drove all over San Antonio to look at houses for sale.

  That drive around town was a really good thing for us. We stopped at eight different homes, all of them big and expensive, and I never once got cold feet about where this was going. I have a connection with that woman—with her daughter too. Sabrina’s daughter, Cori, is a sweet little nine-year-old, much more quiet and reserved than her mother, but destined to be just as beautiful. Cori and I get along great, and I think she’s genuinely excited about getting me as a stepdad. I help her with her homework, and when we’re done, I play games with her on the Xbox.

  Of course, all of this was before the letter.

  In hindsight, I can say the reason we got out was a set of lucky coincidences. Sabrina was on a break at work when the man came and gave her the letter. Normally she doesn’t take a morning break, but a particularly nasty customer who wanted to return a broken figurine without a receipt had left her rattled, and she stepped outside just in time for the letter to find her.

  Normally, Sabrina wouldn’t have even taken the letter. This is a girl who grew up in Housing Authority projects on Roosevelt Avenue. She had to fend off pimps and crackheads every time she walked out her front door. She’s not at all afraid to tell weirdos to buzz off. But she said there was something about the man that made her trust him. She said she felt drawn to him somehow, and when he offered her the letter she couldn’t refuse it.

  Normally, a letter like that one would find its way into the recipient’s hands and get thrown in the garbage. The letter was predicting an imminent zombie apocalypse for Christ’s sake.

  But Sabrina believed him. The first time I read the letter, I believed him too.

  I should pause here to say that Sabrina and I both hold some unconventional opinions. Sabrina thinks the US and Isreali governments worked together to make 9/11 happen, and that the CIA created the AIDS virus to ensure Africa always remained a chaotic Third World country.

  I used to blow off people who believed in these fringy conspiracy theories, but Sabrina has shown me stuff that has blown my mind. She has a video about the Waco massacre that is pretty incredible. And her books on the JFK assassination…I don’t know why anyone thinks a lone gunman was even a possibility.

  One time Sabrina made me watch a short video about Timothy Frye that was posted on the This was a guy who was on track to become the richest man in the history of the world, whose inventions were supposed to cure cancer, who was the darling of the biotech boom in the 90’s, and then he disappeared. In that video they showed a memo Dr. Frye had written to a graduate assistant while he was a student at Johns Hopkins. The memo took the grad student to task for many perceived failings, both in his teaching and in his moral philosophy. One particularly disturbing line from the memo read, “Humans like to think they will own the earth in perpetuity, forgetting that 99% of all species that have ever lived are now extinct.”Planet Gulag web site.

  When Sabrina showed me the letter she got on the Riverwalk, my mind brought forth a picture of that handwritten memo to the grad student. I’m no handwriting expert, but I am 100% certain it was a match.

  “What did he say to you when he gave you the letter?” I asked.

  “He came up to me, and said ‘Excuse me this is for you.’ Then he gave me the letter and left while I was reading it.”

  I pulled up a picture of Timothy Frye on my phone and handed it to her.

  “I was thinking the exact same thing,” she said. “Looking at this picture….it was him. I’m positive of it.”

  “So what do we do?” I asked.

  “What do you mean, what do we do?” Sabrina said. “He tells us exactly what to do in the letter. I think we’d better do it!”

  Here’s what the letter said.

  Dear Citizen,

  Thank you for taking the time to read this note. I selected you to receive it because you look like a genuinely good person, who is worthy of the valuable knowledge I am about to impart.

  In one week’s time, the world as we all know it will come to an end. Five days from now, a new ailment will make itself known. People will wake up with symptoms not terribly dissimilar from the common cold.

  Pray that you don’t wake up on Monday feeling sick.

  That is why you are getting this letter, Citizen. There is still time for you to get out, and I wish to give you that chance. In a few hours, patient zero will contract the sickness and begin infecting those around him. He won’t know he is doing so, because the plague will sit dormant within its victims until Monday morning.

  But by Monday, patient zero will have infected the world, and what looked like a cold on Monday will become fatal on Tuesday.

  That’s when the frightening stuff will begin.

  The plague infects the brain and the dead body “reanimates.” Zombies. I’m talking about zombies, Citizen. In less than a week, the zombie apocalypse will be upon us.

  And now we get to the meat of the letter. There are ways you can protect yourself from the coming plague, but you must act quickly. Here are some guidelines for you.

  1. San Antonio is pretty saf
e today, but by tomorrow there will be people in this city infected with the plague and they won’t even know it. You and your closest loved ones need to be out of the city by tomorrow morning.

  2. If you don’t have a gun, now would be a good time to get one. There’s a gun show in New Braunfels tomorrow. If you buy a gun there, you don’t have to do the waiting period. Make sure you get lots of ammo.

  3. Travel north. Use state highways and back roads. Do not use the Interstate. Aim for a remote location with a low population density, like the Dakotas or Montana. Along the way, stop at stores in small towns and rural areas to build up your provisions, but only for the first two days. By Saturday morning, anyone and everyone you meet may be capable of giving you the plague. You want to be in a secluded space where you can set up camp and begin your new life.

  4. On Monday, the plague will cease being airborne. On Tuesday, the zombies will arrive.

  5. The zombies move about because the plague has reactivated the dead tissue in their brains. A bullet to the brain or an axe to the forehead will bring them down. Zombies can only spread the plague to you with a bite. Don’t be afraid to chop at their heads and get their blood on your clothes. Those who survive will be the ones who aren’t afraid to get messy.

  6. The zombies will not generate body heat, hence a cold winter will freeze them in their tracks. If you can stay warm, the northern part of the country is where you want to be. During the winter, it will be a relatively safe place.

  7. The zombie plague will be with humanity for the rest of your life, but the worst of it will be the first few years, and the worst of that will be the first seven months. Hang in there. Have hope. Those who survive will have the chance to rebuild a kinder, gentler world.

  8. After the plague happens, do not show this letter to anyone. Even though it is impossible for you to stop this, they will blame you if they know you got an advance warning.

  9. You can’t save everyone. Every person you bring with you is another mouth to feed. You only have time to save yourself and your children. Make sure you say your goodbyes to everyone else tonight.

  10. I know you think I’m a crazy loon, but I’m not. I know with 100% certainty that these things are going to happen. If you follow my instructions and none of this comes to pass, you’ll have had a nice northern adventure and will have rehearsed for an emergency, which isn’t a bad outcome at all. But if you don’t follow my instructions and these things do happen, you will be full of regret until the moment a zombie bites you, and you become just another walking corpse.

  Good luck.

  “We should go to the police,” I said.

  “They won’t believe us,” said Sabrina. “And then when it all goes down, they’ll think we were a part of it and throw us in jail.”

  “We have to warn somebody,” I said. “Maybe there is still time to stop this. Maybe if the government gets involved--”

  “We’ll scan the letter and email it to Planet Gulag,” Sabrina said. “They can warn the world. People can choose if they want to believe it or not. We don’t have time to convince anyone. We have to pack up and get going.”

  “But where are we going?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. We should go north, just like Frye suggested. We’ll load up on camping gear and we’ll go to that gun show in New Braunfels.”

  “What about your dad?” I asked. “What about my brother?

  Sabrina’s father, a widower, lived in Galveston, which was the wrong way. My parents weren’t even worth discussing. My father died when I was sixteen and my mother re-married a pastor from Iowa who didn’t approve of me dating a black woman. My brother…well, my brother was sort of a nomad. Last I’d heard he was backpacking in Eastern Europe.

  “I’ll call my dad tonight,” she said. “I’ll ask him to get in his car and drive north to meet us for a camping trip. If he refuses, I’ll read him the letter. If he still refuses, there’s nothing more we can do.”

  Sabrina’s dad had retired with visions of the good life on the beach. The life he got was one of constant rebuilding after every hurricane season. Sabrina and I had begged him to move back to San Antonio and be closer to his granddaughter but he had no interest in coming back. He was a strange old man who wanted to be alone, so that’s where we left him.

  “We’re really gonna do this, aren’t we?” I said.

  “We have to. Maybe nothing will come of it and we’ll feel dumb. But what if something does come of it? What if it’s true?”

  “If it’s true, then we’re all fucked.”

  Timothy

  I need a good supervillain name now that I’ve set in motion the end of the world. It should be something that incorporates my super power….you know, how the girls love me.

  What do you think of Doctor Libido?

  It’s close. I am a doctor, after all. The mad scientist supervillains often start their names with Doctor. Doctor Octopus, Doctor Alchemy, Doctor Moon, Doctor Sun, Doctor Impossible, Doctor Doom.

  Doctor Libido?

  It’s kind of got a cheap porn vibe to it, huh? I’ll have to keep trying.

  On Tuesday morning I left home for my South Texas adventure with all the optimism of a virgin on prom night. Erica kissed me goodbye that morning. It was sweet. We were like a young married couple, all bright-eyed with the promise of life ahead.

  On Wednesday night I returned, having delivered the zombie plague to the world via a street beggar in Houston. As I drove down the private road leading to my compound, I saw the flashing of police lights in the distance.

  I knew right away what it was. Agents Martin and Stamps from the IRS, who had paid me a visit at the beginning of the week…when they didn’t report back the cavalry had come for them.

  No doubt they had already found the armored truck that I foolishly stored in the garage of my casita. The bodies of those agents, now nothing more than picked over skeletons, were locked in my zombie lab behind steel doors accessible only with my secret 10-digit code. They would want me to open those doors. When I refused, they would arrest me, and the last place in the world I wanted to be when all of this shit went down was a jail cell.

  So I turned around. Right in the middle of a dirt road that went to one place and one place only, I flung my Porsche around like a Spin-Out Racer, kicking up a dust cloud worthy of Thelma and Louise in the process. I was right in the middle of my first ever rebel yell when I saw them pouring out of the forest all around like cockroaches. State Troopers in their black cruisers, a whole fleet of them, forming a line across the road in front of me.

  Insert Admiral Ackbar’s signature phrase here.

  I looked in the rearview mirror to see even more police lights coming up from behind. There was nowhere for me to go. If I got out of my car and ran, they’d shoot me down, and I’d never make it to see my signature achievement.

  I stopped the car, and dropped my forehead onto the steering wheel, assessing the situation with a concise sentence spoken aloud for my benefit and my benefit only.

  “Oh my God this blows.”

  Caleb

  Sabrina took the Civic to get Cori out of school, and I took the Sequoia to Rick’s Sporting & Outdoors Superstore off Interstate 35. Not knowing how else to approach the problem, I went up to the front counter and asked the guys what they thought a person would need if the zombie apocalypse happened next week.

  There were two of them at the counter that day: Will and Lee. I wonder where those guys are now. I hope they got out okay, because they totally saved my ass.

  “The zombie apocalypse, eh?” said Lee. “Well, I guess the first thing you gotta do is find a place to hole up.” Lee was the shorter of the two. He wore a tight-fitting camouflage T-shirt and a very sparkly necklace.

  “We’d go north,” I said.

  “No, no,” said Will. “You’ve got to avoid the harsh winters. There are some good places to set up shop here in Texas. You want to be close to what’s left of civilization. It’s lonely in the woods.”


  Will’s voice was dripping in sarcasm as he spoke. Whereas Lee took the question at face value, like it was perfectly normal for a customer to walk into the store and ask about the zombie apocalypse, Will clearly thought I was a goof who just wanted to play.

  “Let’s just pretend that Texas is the epicenter of the apocalypse and it’s safest up north,” I said.

  “Okay,” said Lee. “While we’re at it, what are the other rules in this apocalypse scenario? Are you staying in a house?”

  “Let’s say no.”

  “Then you need a tent,” said Lee.

  “The dude needs a semi-truck with bulletproof glass,” said Will.

  “But we don’t sell semi-trucks, so I think the dude needs a tent,” said Lee. “In any survival situation, shelter is the first priority.”

  “I don’t know,” said Will. “In the zombie apocalypse, I think beer is my first priority.”

  “Well, yeah, that’s a given,” said Lee. “I’m sure this guy…what was your name, Sir?”

  “Caleb.”

  “Caleb. It’s nice to meet you. I’m sure Caleb will have plenty of beer. And girls.”

  “And penicillin,” said Will. “At least…Lee would want some penicillin on-hand with the type of girls he’d bring with him to the apocalypse.”

  “Hey now. Let’s just show the guy some tents.”

  “Yes, please,” I said.

  I didn’t realize it at the time, but choosing a tent was the first step in narrowing down the infinite realm of survival possibilities and getting me focused on an actual plan of escape. Do you choose a tent that other people can see so they can find you and help, or do you choose one that’s camouflaged in case the zombies are attracted to bright colors? Do you choose a big, comfy camping setup, or a small, poleless survival design capable of withstanding high winds and pummeling rain? Are you looking to pitch your tent in a cave or on the side of a mountain? Do you want to make a permanent settlement of sorts or do you want to be mobile?