Zombie Apocalypse Survivor: The Office Worker Page 4

head gear, the loose cable wrapped around his neck and torso. The flesh of Mike's face was missing and appeared to be in Wayne's mouth. Wayne was naked below the waste with toilet paper stuck in the crack of his butt cheeks. Unlike all the rest of Jared's friends, the only wound on Wayne's body, besides the multiple bullet holes in his chest, neck and head, was a perfect set of teeth marks on his thigh. Jared wasn't sure why Wayne had perfect bite mark on his thigh, but he was happy that Eric had taken the opportunity blow Wayne's undead brains out.

  Walking up to Eric's body, Jared saw that Eric's left hand and arm was a bloody mass of deep scratches and bites. Jared said a farewell to Eric, “Sorry buddy, if I'd been here maybe I coulda helped. Rest in peace. Thanks for saving me the trouble...and probably saving my life.”

  Jared checked the last room upstairs and found it empty.

  Time to kill.

  Jared went back downstairs to the kitchen and looked under the sink. He found a pair of heavy duty dish washing gloves and went back upstairs. He dragged Wayne's body to the window of Eric's bedroom and tossed it out. The unclothed flesh of his lower body slapped grotesquely on the cement patio below. Mike's body followed. Then Eric's body after Jared had removed the valuable hand gun. Romero and Mark's bodies were last, requiring a little extra time and effort to drag them up the stairs.

  With his buddies clear of the house and the upstairs windows closed, Jared took a little time to relax. The pantry was well stocked with food, water, and beer. There was a whole years worth of his video games with multiple gaming consoles in the living room. There was also a decent stock pile of guns and ammunition.

  Jared grabbed a bag of chips and a beer. He went into the living room. He picked up a game controller and logged into his Internet gaming account.

  Six months later

  Six months later Jared was playing on-line chess with DogBlaster34, Monopoly with BTimmons1, SingByrde, and HaloDeathBringer, as well as on-line Risk with Sarah072855, Bobby_Thompson_76 and ASL29MNM. He was pondering his options in each of the various games when the power went out.

  The zombie apocalypse on-line gaming community still played their usual first person shooters, but they found there was a lot more challenge and personality with some of the older board-style games that could now be played on-line. It was easier to get to know the other players and, for most, the only human contact they had. There was also the fact that many people could only access these games, meaning a larger on-line community.

  Jared had even gone so far as to hook up Eric's crappy Wii and was participating in daily sport tournaments. Since he didn't have weights or any other exercise equipment, this turned out to be the only way he could exercise. Hordes of mindless undead still wandered the streets of the neighborhood, which made the activities of jogging and bicycling a really bad idea.

  When the power shut off, Jared just sat there for five minutes. His mind was unable to adjust to the lack of input and the uncertainty of this sudden and new reality. He didn't know what to do.

  A month later his food ran out. When the power went out, Jared's comfortable life had become Jared's miserable life. He spent most of his time huddled under a thick layer of blankets in the spare bedroom in an effort to stay warm. He had a little Coleman stove that he could have used for heat, but he only used it to heat up the remaining cans of food. His only selection was bean with bacon soup and chili con carne. Thinking about the food situation, Jared realized that if his five friends were still alive, their food would have run out a long time ago.

  He still three cans of propane left and decided to use this final stash to heat up the bedroom. Maybe getting a little heat back into his bones would change his mood. He left the window cracked a little to vent the gases.

  As the room began to warm up and the heat finally made its way into the depths of his soul, Jared felt refreshed and ready to contemplate his next move. He really wasn't sure what his next move was going to be. He and his friends hadn't planned anything beyond barricading Eric's house and playing video games for the duration of the zombie Armageddon. What he did want was food, warmth and companionship. Exactly how to get all three he wasn't too sure about.

  Thinking about the on-line community, he remembered that there was a gamer a couple towns away. He wasn't sure that he wanted to hang out with some crusty old man who sucked at every game he played and blamed everyone else for cheating. That guy's power had probably also shut off the same time as Jared's and he was probably in the same situation.

  What Jared wouldn't mind was female companionship. There was a college nearby. Maybe he could check it out. It couldn't hurt and there was probably food to be found on the way. Maybe there would be more than one woman, just in case the one woman happened to be like Sheila. Perhaps going to the college was a foolish idea and it would be full of undead cheer leaders, but for Jared it was as good a plan as any.

  He made ready to go visit the college dorms. Getting ready to leave was easy since he had no food to pack. What he did pack was Eric's Glock pistol and mini-14 rifle and all the ammo he could throw in a back pack. He also threw in a bottle of water just in case. He went to Eric's bed room and opened the window. It had been closed since the day he tossed his buddies out. Looking down he could see them now. Their partially rotted corpses were heaped in a pile below.

  He shimmied backwards out the window until his feet were back on the plywood boards. Then he dropped onto the pile of his friend's corpses, landing unsteadily as their dried flesh and bones shifted under his weight. He stepped from Mark's back, then onto Eric's hand and then onto the pavement.

  Leaning against the house was the Cleveland Indians bat. He grabbed it and made his way back out of the neighborhood the same way he came in. The back yards were still vacant.

  Dorm Life

  Jared's journey to the college was similar to the journey he made seven months ago from his old employer building to Eric's house. Moving quickly and only using the bat to dispatch the wandering dead that came into his path, he made good time without drawing unwanted attention and attracting a horde of pursuers.

  As he got nearer to the college, the number of zombies wandering the streets decreased dramatically, but the buildings along the street also began to show more and more signs of violence and vandalism. Windows were broken out, shelves were ransacked and the doors were busted open. Several buildings were even burnt to the ground. Everywhere, scores of bodies littered the ground. Most appeared to have lain in place for a long period of time. The stains of death now marking the pavement in dark rings that spread away from the body. The clothing was now faded and worn from sun, weather and scavenging insects. Save for the sound of a light breeze, the streets were silent.

  Jared finished his trek to the campus and stopped. He stood there, just off the road and on the sidewalk bordering the campus. He looked all around him and marveled. There were no zombies.

  Looking around and paying more attention to detail, he noticed large mounds in various areas on the campus. He walked towards them to get a closer look and realized the mounds were composed of bodies. Many of the corpses bore a strange pattern of mayhem. Their upper torsos appeared to have been crushed and deformed. The heads and chests were folded and twisted to impossible angles. Many of the faces had been completely obliterated, even the grim visage of undeath wiped clean or caved into the skull. Walking around the pile, Jared noticed a set of deep tire tracks.

  He followed the tracks further into the depths of the campus. He passed several dorms that had been completely overrun by the hordes of undead. The windows were broken and their interiors dark and uninviting. The doors hung LOOSE, open like gaping mouths ready to swallow him. There were no bodies in these buildings.

  Following the tracks further Jared came to a large three story dormitory building. There was a little bucket scoop parked just outside of the front doors. The windows were boarded up, but the main entryway was wide open. It was halfway
boarded over, but there was an opening large enough for a person to walk through. Jared walked up to the door and looked inside. It looked like the other half of the door and re-enforcing boards had been knocked inside and now lay on the floor in front of him. Beyond the mess on the floor, it was simply too dark to see anything in the interior of the building.

  Cautiously he made his way up the steps and stopped just before entering the building. He let his eyes adjust to the darkness and allowed his other senses work. He couldn't smell the putrid odor of the freshly turned undead or the sickly sweetness of those long turned to leather. It was also very silent. The undead never seemed to stop, they were always moving in search of prey. This meant there was always some noise associated with them, like the scuff of feet on the ground, the crinkle of trash as they stepped on it, or the flutter of their clothing as they moved about.

  Jared stepped into the entry and onto the broken door lying on the floor. He felt it give a little and rock forward as he put his weight on it. Something underneath the board snapped and he heard a faint metal ping from overhead. Looking up at the noise he saw the glint of metal in the dim interior and heard a whoosh. Panicked at the sudden