Can You Survive the Zombie Apocalypse?

by Max Brallier

  “I don’t know. How about convenience? Living in the greatest city in the world. Where do you live?”

  “Brooklyn,” he says, leaning back and crossing his arms defiantly.

  Khaki calls order. “Alright, guys. Brooklyn versus Manhattan. What killed the dinosaurs. These are questions that can be debated forever. Now isn’t the time. You were saying?”

  “I was saying we have one advantage over the rest of these—unprepareds,” Elvis says, looking right at you. “We look like the zombies.”

  “You thinking what I’m thinking?” Taft says.

  Then the three of them, together, big grins: “Shaun of the Dead.”

  “What that’s now?”

  “Hello? Shaun of the Dead. 2004. Simon Pegg, Nick Frost. Directed by Edgar Wright. Classic zom-com.”

  “But where to?” Khaki says. “What’s safe?”

  You’ve got it. You were just staring at it. “Statue of Liberty.”

  They exchange glances.

  “He has a good point,” Taft says. “In John Carpenter’s Escape From New York, Liberty Island served as a base of operations for the military. We could use it in much the same way.”

  “Can zombies cross water?” someone in the crowd pipes up.

  You interject. “I um, I just saw them swimming—but I mean I don’t know if they were full zombies, or y’know, in transition or whatever.”

  Taft shoots you a look that says you’re invading his zombie knowledge territory. “Well,” he says, “the water issue depends on who you ask. In George Romero’s Land of the Dead, they do cross the water—finally infiltrating Fiddler’s Green. And in Lucio Fulci’s Zombie, also known as Zombi 2, there’s the classic zombie-versus-shark scene.”

  “But won’t they smell us? You know, smell that we’re different, when we’re out there?” someone else calls out.

  “Depends. Some zombie fiction, yes; some no.”

  “Wait—isn’t this a meat storage warehouse?” you ask.

  “Yeah.”

  “So—you get some meat. Rub it on yourself. It’ll hide the smell.”

  They argue. Buncha dorks. They’re insufferable. You stand up and go to explore on your own—can’t stand much more of these guys.

  In the back is a heavy metal door that leads to the freezer area.

  Huge slabs of meat hang on hooks. Thick sides of beef. Jackpot. You walk back out to the group.

  “Guys—if we want to go out there or not—having the meat can’t hurt. So how about you quit arguing and you help?”

  They shut up. Think for a second, then a few get up and follow you to the freezer. You’re feeling pretty good—you came into this situation and took charge. Not common for you.

  Five of you work together, lifting the slab of meat up off the hook. It hits the floor with a thud. You try to push it. Too cold. You leave the freezer, take off your shoes, put your socks on your hands, and put your shoes back on. They do the same. Together, some pushing, some pulling, you get the beef out onto the floor.

  It takes nearly three full days for the meat to thaw. You and the others sleep as much as you can. When you don’t sleep, you discuss the plan. Diagram the walk. You’re just three blocks from the harbor—you’ll drench yourselves in cow guts, shuffle over there, drawing as little attention as possible, then jump straight into the harbor and swim your asses off.

  The whole time—as you talk, as you discuss the plan—you hear the moans of the beasts outside.

  Finally, the meat has thawed enough that it’s usable. Khaki calls everyone together.

  “Alright,” he tells everyone. “Wash up.”

  You stab your hand into the cold side of the cow. Pull an ice-cold chunk from the animal’s meaty underside. You hold the fleshy pile in your hand and stare at it. Is this really what it’s come to? Ahh, the twists and turns of life…

  You wash your body with the meat, rubbing it over your face, neck, and arms. And then over your clothes. You stick a few hunks in your pocket. Can’t hurt.

  When you’ve finished lathering in beef, you try to rip your shirt for the visual effect. Man, Hulk Hogan made it look easy. After a minute, you get your collar to split. Guess that’s all you’ll get.

  You look around at everyone rubbing chunks of dead cow over themselves. Christ, this is the most ridiculous plan ever.

  Are you really going to go through with this?

  Hell no. You’ll take your chances waiting for rescue. Click here.

  New and improved Zombie Walk it is. Click here.

  DAMN THE MAN

  The Angels stare at you. The Colonel’s look is penetrating.

  You cough, then start. “It seems to me you’ve got a lot to risk here. And for what? You’re a bunch of halfway outlaws anyways. What do you want that the government can give you? Privacy? You already got it. Money? Everyone here is doing OK.”

  The Colonel glares. “I don’t think you’re in any position to—”

  “Hey, GI Joe—back off,” Jones says. “He’s with us, for now.”

  Wow. Have cooler words ever been spoken? The leader of the NYC Hells Angels chapter just told a United States colonel to back off, because you’re with them. You’re with them.

  Whatever got you this far, you must be doing something right.

  “Like I was saying,” you continue, “I don’t really see what they can offer that you haven’t already got. So why stick your neck out?”

  The Colonel steps forward. “How about this for an answer—because if you don’t, I’ll send a smart bomb straight up your asshole and turn this cute little clubhouse here into a smoking hole in the ground.”

  Jones is out of his chair in the Colonel’s face in two seconds flat. “I was leaning toward yes,” he says, “but now you can go fuck yourself. You want a war with the Hells Angels? Don’t think you do—that’s a war you ain’t gonna win, boss. Not even the fucking Army. So why don’t you get the fuck out the way you came?”

  The Colonel glares at Jones, then abruptly spins on his heels and leaves.

  Everyone looks at you. You look at the floor, not sure what to say.

  “Fuck ’em all,” Jones says.

  Even the ones who wanted to go for it can agree with that statement.

  Thankfully, the Colonel’s threats never come true. You spend the next six months holed up in the club, making occasional runs for food and booze. On one run, you split one of the creatures in half with a chainsaw—a half second before it has a chance to get at Limpy. You’re a hero.

  Louis ODs on heroin about a month after that. Jones pulls you aside, tells you can have his room. You thank him. For the first time in months, you get to sleep in a real bed, and it’s fantastic—even though Louis died in it.

  The sleep is great—the waking up part, not as much. Something wet on your face. Water? No. Whiskey is standing over you, pissing on you. He raises his pecker, pissing in your face.

  “What the fuck!” you scream, coughing, rolling out of the bed onto the floor and spitting out piss.

  Whiskey laughs riotously as Tommy pulls you to your feet and knees you in the balls. You buckle over. Then he throws a vicious right hook, dropping you to the floor.

  “What did I do?” you say, tears coming to your eyes.

  Tommy grabs you, piss dripping from your face, and drags you out into the hall. He gives you a kick in the face that sends you down the stairs. Something cracks. Finger. Broken.

  You hit the floor at the bottom of the stairs. You’re seeing stars.

  Then you look up. Jones is standing over you, smiling. He holds a leather vest, full Hells Angels patch on the back. He drops it on you. Smiles.

  “Welcome to the Hells Angels, kid,” he says.

  AN END

  SAVIN’ SOME KIDS

  You rush back to Mrs. Henderson’s room. The kids are at the windows, looking outside.

  “Hey, knock it off—get in your seats. Don’t look out there. Now tell me—is there a janitor’s closet or something like that around he
re?”

  “Yes but it’s locked,” the know-it-all girl says. “Billy can open it—he got suspended for breaking in.”

  Someone—Billy, you assume—tells the know-it-all to shut up.

  “Billy, show me that closet.”

  He leads you down the hall. You forgot how cute elementary schools were. Charming little lockers. Drawings pinned to the walls.

  He leads you to the closet.

  “Damn, how’d you get into this thing?”

  Billy crosses his arms.

  “Tell me.”

  “Twenty bucks.”

  “Twenty bucks! You know what I pay each month in rent?”

  Billy doesn’t say a damn thing. You reach into your rear pocket, thumb through your wallet. “Little bastard, here.”

  He takes the twenty dollars, runs down the hall, opens his locker, and runs back. He sticks his hand out, grinning. “I copied the key,” he says proudly.

  Hmm. Badass. You open the door, step inside, and begin rooting through the closet. “Man, I can’t find a damn—Billy, come here.”

  Silence.

  “Billy?”

  You poke your head out.

  Billy’s on the floor, shaking, a little monster girl on top of him.

  “Fuck!”

  Frantically, you search through the closet for anything of use. A roll of paper towels. You chuck it at the girl—it bounces off. Billy’s screaming, fighting with everything he’s got. You root through the janitor’s closet. More crap. Cleaning supplies. Pile of rags.

  In the back, a mop, still attached to the bucket. You grab it. The girl’s about to go in for the kill. You whip the mop and bucket around like a giant hammer and smash it against the thing’s head. The plastic cracks. Soapy water covers everything.

  The thing rears back, stunned. Then charges at you. You swing again, into the thing’s legs, sweeping it off the ground.

  “Fuck me—if anyone up there is watching me now, I’m sorry.”

  You put your foot on the undead girl’s throat, pinning it to the ground. Then you snap the mop over your knee and slam the splintered wood down through the undead girl’s eye.

  “Billy, you OK?”

  He gets up.

  “You bit anywhere? You bleeding?” you ask.

  Poor kid’s scared to death. But he shakes his head no. You give him a good once-over. He’s OK. Phew. You order him back to his classroom and he goes, happy as hell to be away from his dead classmate lying on the floor.

  In the very back of the closet you find what you were hoping for—a Weed Whacker. Battery powered. You rip the plastic cover off the blade, turning it into a giant circular saw on a stick. You rev it up. Give it a squeeze. The blade spins. Yeah, this should do.

  You return to the gym. The zombie kids, along with a few zombie teachers, continue to attack the trailer. The door is coming off at the hinges.

  OK—if you’re going to do this, you have to do it now.

  Oh, Lord. It’s gonna take a lot of Hail Marys to shed this one. This isn’t a prostitute-in-Amsterdam-during-spring-break type sin. Nope—this is a decapitating-little-kids sin.

  No time to think about it.

  You kick open the double doors. Rev the whacker to get the zombies’ attention.

  As soon as you see the kids, you don’t feel bad—just fear. Twisted faces. Gray-green skin. Scary as all hell.

  Stay strong, you tell yourself.

  “Alright, kids—let’s dance.”

  Half of them leave the trailer and head straight for you. One out in front, a little athletic kid, leads the pack.

  As if in slow motion, you raise the weapon up, taking off the top of its head. Spin around, swing it, split the face of the next. Chop off the next at the legs. Dance your way through the moaning crowd, blood spraying with every wave of the weapon.

  They’ve pried the door open. You have to move. You approach the trailer, a heap of bodies in your wake. Raise the Weed Whacker high and bring it down on the head of a kid who’s about to slip inside the trailer door.

  You whip it around, clearing away any others that are around you. Their chests slice open and they fall back.

  Two loud honks. Praise the Lord. A school bus—just outside the gate.

  “Let’s go!” the driver shouts.

  You rip open the door. Students and teachers are huddled as far away from the door as possible, scared. They look at you with horror. You realize you’re still holding down the trigger to the Weed Whacker and it’s spraying blood and gore all over the place. You let go and it whirs to a stop. “Sorry…”

  You don’t get the hero’s welcome you were hoping for.

  “C’mon—there’s a bus outside, we have to go. I’ll be right behind you.”

  They run for it. You stay beside them, swinging the Weed Whacker and keeping the little bastards at bay.

  They all scramble aboard the bus—you get on last. “Alright, we’re out of here,” the driver says.

  “Where to?” you say.

  “North.”

  “What’s north?”

  “I don’t know—but it’s away from here.”

  “OK—one sec though—gotta get the other kids.”

  “Huh?”

  “Gotta pick up Mrs. Henderson’s class.”

  “What?”

  “Hang tight—three minutes.”

  You rush back inside the school. The kids are in their class, staring out the windows, just like you told them not to. “C’mon, we’re going, now.”

  “Where?”

  “North.”

  “What’s north?”

  “Ice cream.”

  They chase you down the hall and out into the bloody schoolyard. They shriek as they see the dismembered bodies of a hundred of their classmates. You tell them not to look, just get to the bus.

  You pull out your cell phone, hand it to one of them. “Kids, call your parents.”

  Then you turn to the driver. “Alright, let’s roll.”

  AN END

  THE POOL CUE AND THE BIG BUCK HUNTER SHOTGUN

  You take the pool cue from the table, slip it into your belt, and grab the Big Buck Hunter gun.

  You stand at the door to the hallway. You can hear the things beyond it. “OK,” Anthony says, “if your little idea about the toy gun is right—then that’s a big help. So you’re going first.”

  Anthony unlocks the door.

  You let out a long, slow breath of air. For a moment you feel brave—like you’ve got it all under control. You know that moment and that feeling won’t last, so you have to ride the wave while you can.

  With everything you’ve got, you kick open the door. It hits one of the zombies, sending it stumbling back.

  You raise the gun and cock it—then you remember it’s fake, and cocking it is ridiculous. But you keep it raised—stick it right in the face of the first zombie.

  Annnnd… it doesn’t do a damn thing. You could be pointing a feather duster for all it cares.

  It lunges at you. You grab the Buck Hunter gun with both hands and block its attack. It pushes you back and crashes to the ground on top of you, lashing away with vicious teeth. Fear pumps through you. Behind it, you see the others approaching.

  You struggle. Fucking stupid toy gun—what the hell were you thinking?

  Suddenly blood sprays out from the beast’s back like it just sprouted a pair of red wings. Anthony stands above you. He wrenches the ax out of the creature’s back, then yanks the zombie off you. You’re barely back on your feet when another lunges. It goes for Anthony.

  You drop the gun and swing the pool cue across your body, catching the beast on the side of the head, just before he has a chance to bury his teeth into Anthony’s shoulder. The thing smacks into the wall. You give it four more hard hits to the head and it drops.

  Anthony takes the lead now, swinging the fire ax. He decapitates one. Splits another one’s head open down the middle like a coconut—has to jerk and wiggle the ax to get it free.

&nbs
p; He catches the next one in the side, dropping it. It squirms on the floor. You go to work on its head, bashing it with the pool cue until it stops moving.

  You continue down the hall like this—Anthony keeping them at a distance with long, lethal swings of the ax. Those that he maims, you finish off.

  Finally, there’s only one left. Tall guy, in a gray suit. Looks a bit like your old high school principal—if your old high school principal had one arm and half a throat. This one clearly hasn’t learned a damn thing from any of his friends.

  It charges.

  Anthony swings.

  And misses.

  The blade goes over its head. The beast hits Anthony square in the chest. Digs his teeth into Anthony’s side. Anthony howls, tries to push it off. Instead he trips and falls back.

  You crack the pool cue over the beast’s head. It does nothing, continues feasting.

  You turn to run.

  Fuck. Anthony’s hand around your ankle.

  “Help me,” he says, blood coming from his mouth. “Help me.”

  Oh God. You try to shake free. Can’t. His fingers squeeze. You can’t move—can only watch.

  The thing works its way up Anthony’s body, foreplay almost, then digs into his neck. Blood spills. Anthony’s hand opens. Releases you.

  Thank God. You turn to run back—you need reinforcements.

  Then something tackles you from behind. Digs its teeth into your back. And just as suddenly, it’s gone.

  You roll over. Anthony stands over you. His eyes are milky, unfocused. They dart around, looking you over. Then he bends over, grabs you by the waist with his huge hands, and picks you up. He wraps his arms around and squeezes. All the air shoots out of your chest. You can’t breathe. You kick. Struggle. Anything to get free. Don’t want to die like this.

  But you’re going to.

  Anthony squeezes tighter. You hear a crack, pain shoots through your chest.

  Anthony opens his massive jaw. Brings his head forward, so it’s just an inch from yours. And then he sinks his teeth into your face…

  AN END

  WELCOME TO LIBERTY ISLAND