Authors: Noel Merczel
Now the chicks would flock to him. And not just ugly old fat chicks
, he thought, throwing his old friend Dominique under the bus
. Hot young chicks! Even that bitch, Lisa! She would hang on him, begging him to protect her.
Nick grabbed some supplies from around the house and tossed them into his survival backpack. He had a few MREs purchased at an army navy shop in Chicago...Chicken Tetrazzini and beef
stew...even a dehydrated ice-cream sandwich.
Nick liked to think of himself as a survivalist.
He also had some Steel Bar protein bars (his favorite brand), a few water bottles, a package of tablets that were supposed to make water safe to drink, a lighter, first aid kit, his cell phone and charger (it could work for a while, before all the electricity went out).
And of course, a weapon.
Nick chose a hammer, fashioned after his favorite character, Lionelle
, on Dead Heads.
Before he left, Nick quickly fed his African Cichlid fish and scribbled out a note for his mom explaining that the apocalypse had begun and he was going out to fight the war.
He warned his mom to lock all the doors and suggested she team up with Mr. and Mrs. Francis down the street who owned guns.
Don't open the door for anyone, even if you think you know them, Nick warned. Then he told his mom he loved her, and that he would be back
.
S
hit. His photography equipment, which included a Nikon D3X camera...that baby costs over eight thousand bucks!
Plus he had all his lenses and his tripod....Nick had no choice. He had to leave it all behind. If he tried to bring the expensive equipment with him, it would just weigh him down.
Nick ripped off another piece of paper from the memo pad with the fat cat that said WEIGHTY THOUGHTS and wrote an addendum to his mom.
Hey mom! Please lock up my photog. equip. in the safe. I'll be back for it when I can.
Thanx...your ever grateful son.
There. That should do it.
Nick was well aware that leaving the safety of his home was not the ideal choice to make in a zombie apocalypse. He should be "bugging in" as opposed to "bugging out," by boarding up windows and turning the house into an impenetrable fortress. Maybe even setting up a place where he could "sniper" out
intruders.
However, his adrenaline was soaring. He couldn't stay put. He had to be a part of it. A hero.
Backpack on... hammer in hand... Nick opened his front door and headed out into the apocalypse.
"Bring it on!" Nick declared, looking all around.
He heard gun shots in the distance, along with the sound of the tornado siren usually reserved for Tuesday morning tests. To
top off the scene, there was even thunder rumbling.
Cool!
This was his world... like a comic book come to life.
Nick the Hero of the Zombie Apocalypse had arrived!
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Gina knew she couldn't stay in the shed forever. She had to plan her next move. But it felt so safe in
side; like her own little house.
An oasis in the storm.
Maybe she could just stay there until morning. Maybe by morning the police w
ould come and make everything safe again.
Everything seemed less scary in the light of day.
But what about her parents? What happened to them?
Did they get away? Were they also crouching, right now, inside someone
's shed?
Gina didn't think her dad's bad knees could crouch very well, but she sure hoped her parents were safe, where ever they were
.
Maybe they were in someone else's shed - or on top of a sliding board somewhere.
They were probably so worried about her!
She didn't have her cell phone to call them.
Besides, her cell phone might not even work. 9-1-1 wasn't working, after all.
Gina thought her parents were the most annoying people on earth, but they were still her parents.
She felt tears forming in her eyes. She remembered what the news announcer said about the mosquito bites. Luckily, there
weren’t any mosquitoes in the shed.
Her mom had a mosquito bite, though.
A big huge whopping one
!
Could it really be true? Were all the news announcements for real, and
this whole thing wasn't some big hoax or a movie promotion?
Was that even possible
?
Gina felt like she was starring in a horror movie...a
movie she didn't even want to be in.
The kind of movie that makes her feel scared days after she's seen it. Her parents were unwilling actors in this same awful movie
.
If they were even still alive....
"Of course they're alive
!" Gina said out loud.
“They got away!”
This whole thing felt so....
surreal.
Usually, Gina liked that word "surreal."
It reminded her of magical lands with glittery skies and pastel trees and cartoon fairies, like the pretty magical art she created on those free photo edit sites, like PicMonkey, Befunky, and Pizap.
But this kind of surreal was the bad kind. It was the
creepy kind you have in a spooky dream where a doll comes to life and tells you it's going to kill you and the whole thing seems so real and you’re so happy to wake up
.
There was a tiny window in the shed
. Gina kept standing up and peeking out, m
aking sure
no one was coming to get her. Whatever that meant.
Coming to get her and...
what
?
Eat her alive
?
Gina shivered. She could
n’t imagine a worse fate than being eaten alive... by a shark or a tiger or....
a
pink zombie
?
What does it feel like when something bites into your skin with its teeth? She couldn't even imagine...
Usually Gina liked the color pink. Actually, pink was her favorite color.
I should change my favorite color
, Gina decided.
Maybe
I can switch it to yellow. Yellow is a happy color
!
Gina couldn't believe she had felt so horny and had been playing that dumb
game in her bedroom just a little while ago.
That time in her bedroom seemed like a whole life time ago!
She
heard the ominous sound of the tornado siren going off.
Was there a tornado on top of all this
?
Or was it a zombie siren now
?
Even though the thought of a tornado had always scared Gina so much in the past, a tornado seemed preferable to a zombie
.
Even Pit-bulls, which were way scarier than tornadoes, seemed preferable to zombies...
Idly, Gina remembered that dumb movie, Sharknado, where the sharks were picked up out of the ocean by tornadoes and dropped in people's yards and houses...
What if that happened with zombies?
Zombinado...
Maybe she could pitch that idea to some big head of a movie company and get rich...
Gina shook her head to get rid of these silly thoughts.
She needed to get serious here!
People never took her seriously, and Gina knew there was a good reason for that.
She had a reputation for
acting sort of silly.
But Gina also knew that underneath that layer of silliness resided a smart person, just waiting to come out...
Was that woman really a dead person come back to life
? Gina interrupted herself.
"No, that's not possible," she said out loud to the dark shed. "Right?"
No one answered, of course.
It's not possible! It's not possible
! Gina kept telling herself.
But wait! The news
claimed they were NOT
dead!
This was a virus like on that movie I Am Legend, with Will Smith.
T
he creatures in that movie didn't die
and come back to life. They just had a virus.
But that didn't even matter, because they sure didn't seem human.
Which was worse... a zombie or a vampire
? Gina pondered.
Depends,
Gina answered herself.
Vampires are usually much more slick. And much, much smarter.
Zombies are just dumb...shuffling along looking for food. They
can't really problem-solve or anything. Besides, a door can stop a zombie, but a door can't stop a vampire. Even if it's locked
.
But there are always so many more zombies than vampires, so the sheer number of them makes them more of a problem...besides, they just look more gross and probably smell really bad.....but vampires are truly evil. Zombies are just hungry, like they can't help it.....
Gina hugged herself in the corner of the shed. She always had these little
conversations with herself. If only they could stick a little TV camera into her head, it would probably make an interesting talk show. Gina’s Brain, they could call it.
Gina's Brain On Ice.
That title didn't even make sense. But it sounded good.
Anyway, she felt so alone right now. She may be
seventeen
years old, but she still wished she had her favorite stuffed animal to comfort her.
Gina's favorite stuffed animal was a giant stuffed cat named Sassy. The cat was a super fluffy tan and brown Siamese with big blue eyes. Right now, Gina felt like
hugging Sassy and just giving in to more tears.
She was allowed, right?
She patted her own arms and rocked back and forth on the shed floor. She felt so scared and cold
and alone.
What happens after you die
?
she wondered.
What if I become one of those pink zombies?
Will my skin rot off while I'm walking around looking for people to eat?
Well first, my skin will get that ugly rash all over it. Then maybe all my hair will fall out. I will be gross
!
Gina told herself
.
Gina couldn't stand the thought of being gross. Being young and cute and sexy
- that was her whole identity.
Gina didn't like to think about death either
. And usually she didn't, except after her gerbil Nutella died
. But even death had to be fun and happy and safe and pretty in Gina's fantasies.
She pictured Nutella in this little portion of heaven that is fenced off just for gerbils... or maybe gerbils and hamsters and guinea pigs all together, for convenience sake, and it would contain lots of bright colorful wheels to run on and tasty things to chew on... and there would be endless piles of sunflower seeds....
When Gina died, since she was being forced to think about death, she wanted to be a cartoon. A cute happy cartoon
in a bright yellow dress that skipped around singing...
No
! She scolded herself.
Stop being so silly
!
I know what I want to be
, Gina amended her thoughts
.
I want to be a SIMS character. That's a lot more sophisticated than a cartoon
!
And I will live in one of those big beautiful SIMS houses that I decorate so beautifully...with a huge swimming pool out back and friends coming over for parties all the time, even those green alien friends they put in the game for some weird reason...
And I will never change... I will never grow old...
Will that be possible one day, that you can just load your brain up to the computer
? Gina wondered.
Kind of like they do in the movie Avatar..
..
Gina felt the bottoms of her feet. They felt all gritty and gross. Gina hated feeling gross....
Someone was looking in the window of the shed!
Gina screamed.
God, that was shocking!
It was a bald headed guy.
But was he one of ....
them
?
No, he was just a regular guy with a bald head.
But what did he want? Why was he here looking into the Mathewson's shed?
Gina thought that maybe she'd seen him before, walking down Country Club Drive with a big camera around his neck.
He waved at her. Gina just stared at the bald-headed guy
She stared with big scared cornflower blue
eyes.