Don't Dare Call Them Zombies : Books 1-4

by Zachary Stone

  “My mother might be in that library,” I said. “If she could be there I have to go.”

  The officer sat down on a bench in front of the store for a moment.

  “They took a busload of people from the library to the relocation center outside of Dublin this morning,” he said. “I heard everyone else is going to be evacuated tonight.”

  “Were you in the library?” I asked.

  “Briefly,” he said.

  “My mother is the assistant librarian there. She’s a short woman with dirty blonde hair, about fifty five years old, and should have had on a library uniform. Do you remember seeing her?” I asked.

  He looked down the road at a group of freaks approaching us. They would be upon us in a few minutes.

  “I think so,” he said. “But I would advise you to stay where you’re at. This area of town is safer.”

  He stood up and walked over to his police car.

  “Sorry for pointing a gun at y’all,” he said. “My nerves are shot today.”

  He then opened the door to his police car, got in, and drove towards the small group of freaks walking towards us. Upon stopping his car he rolled down his window, fired four shots, and killed the freaks. He then accelerated away.

  We had to act fast. The gunshots would draw attention.

  “Get in the van and crank it up,” I told Jennifer. “Then head towards the back of the store.”

  The van started up with a single turn of the key. We crossed the road and drove to the back of the store.

  “Get ready to drive the van into the stockroom,” I told Jennifer. “I’m going to run inside and open the bay door.”

  I hopped out of the van and ran around the corner to the emergency entrance. Ms. Suzy was still standing there holding the door open.

  “I wondered when you would show up,” she said, looking very relieved.

  I ran inside and started pulling the chain that would raise the docking bay door. Quickly, the door began to move upwards revealing the van outside. I waved for Jennifer to drive it inside when I saw two freaks emerging from the woods behind the store. As soon the van was inside I began to close the bay door.

  With only moments to spare, I managed to shut the bay door before the two freaks could reach us. Jennifer got out of the van and handed me the keys.

  “Next time you’re driving,” she said.

  I informed Ms. Suzy and Katie of what the officer had told us. They were eager to get ready for our attempt to reach the library. We packed food, water, and weapons into the van. We also loaded up some hose that we would need to siphon gas from one of the parked vehicles in front of the store. And just in case they were needed at the library, we also picked an assortment of antibiotics from the pharmacy.

  Before leaving, we rigged the emergency exit so that it wouldn’t automatically lock when it closed. However, we placed a chain and padlock on the door. The freaks might be able to get a peek inside if they tried to open it, but they wouldn’t be able to open it more than a few inches.

  As we opened the bay door to drive outside, we were ready for the freaks that were still leaning against it. Ms. Suzy speared one with an ice pick on a broom handle, and I smashed the other freak’s skull with a piece of shelving. Seeing no more freaks in the immediate area, I jumped out of the van and rapidly pulled the bay door closed, then got back into the driver’s seat.

  We drove slowly to a position behind the dumpster. Jennifer, who was sitting in the passenger seat, let herself out. She then set one of the remote control vehicles we had seen earlier on the ground. She switched on the MP3 player we had taped on top of it, and remotely drove it into the street and then into the road. The freaks in the parking lot started walking toward the sound of a country music, as we drove slowly towards the closest vehicle. We tried to make as little noise as possible as we exited the van. I then began siphoning fuel from a small green truck that was close to the entrance of the store.

  Before I was halfway done the freaks had destroyed the MP3 player. The music stopped playing and our distraction was gone. We tried to hide behind the van and the small green truck as I finished. A few of the closest freaks had heard our voices and started walking slowly towards us.

  Picking up the large knife at my side I walked toward the closest freak. The swollen face of the female monster snarled at me. With one quick slice I chopped her head off. With dark blood dripping from the knife I approached another freak. It was wildly swinging its arms at me so I carefully tried to dart behind it. Before it could turn around I struck its back with my knife. The freak collapsed, but its face was still snarling at me.

  I ran back and saw that Ms. Suzy was pouring the gasoline we had siphoned into the van’s gas tank. Jennifer was busy trying to siphon additional gasoline from the truck. Turning around, I realized that more of the freaks were coming.

  “That’s enough, Jennifer,” I said. “Let’s take what we have and go!”

  We all rushed into the van. It only had two seats; both of them were in the front. Ms. Suzy and Katie sat in the back of the van on blankets, and Jennifer sat next to me. I started the van and drove out of the parking lot.

  I looked at the gasoline gauge. We had one eighth of a tank of gas. It should be enough to take us to the library and back, if we didn’t have problems.

  We passed by my truck as we headed down the road towards town. For the first few minutes there were nothing but trees on each side of the road, and the occasional isolated house. However, before long we began to encounter more broken down or abandoned vehicles and we frequently would see freaks chewing on the bodies of their victims in the road or on the sidewalk.

  We had to slow down as we approached an intersection that was almost completely blocked by abandoned vehicles of all kinds. Two freaks were in the way of our only way through the maze of cars and trucks. I bought the van to a stop.

  “Should we go out there and take them out?” Jennifer asked. “There are only two of them.”

  “Too dangerous,” I said. “We really need to avoid hand-to-hand combat with them.”

  “Why don’t we run them over?” Ms. Suzy exclaimed.

  “We don’t want to risk damaging the van and getting stuck this far away from the store,” I said.

  I pulled the ear plugs from my shirt pocket, and put them in my ears. I backed up the van slightly, and angled it so I could fire from the driver’s side window. My first shot was a direct hit on the first freak. As the second freaked approached, I realized if he walked any closer to the van it would create the opening I needed to drive around him.

  I waited for a moment and took the opportunity to drive the van through the opening the freak had created. I then turned left at the intersection.

  In the distance ahead I could see that the road was about to become even more difficult to navigate. More freaks and abandoned vehicles were clogging the road. As we made our way closer to town we could see that Main Street would be impossible to get through. Thankfully, we had planned for that.

  A subdivision was up ahead. It would hopefully allow us to go around the most populated part of town -- where the most of the infected freaks would be -- and allow us to get to the library on Shirley Lane.

  As we turned left the smell of smoke became more intense. A number of fires were still smoldering in the neighborhood. A few homes had burnt down.

  In addition to the freaks walking through people’s yards and pounding on the doors of some of the homes, we could see a few humans peering at our van through their windows. Sadly, they were probably hoping we had come to rescue them.

  Every now and then we heard a gunshot come from the large subdivision. Any freaks we passed by would instantly lift their heads to try and figure out what direction it came from. Sometimes they would walk towards the direction of the gunshot, and sometimes they would try and follow our van.

  As we approached a crossroads we came upon a truly awful sight. A school bus full of children had apparently been attacked. Several freaks were ins
ide of the bus devouring their remains. A few of the children had apparently been infected as well, and their now twisted faces pressed against the windows.

  “Do you think they suffered?” Jennifer asked me, as Ms. Suzy gasped with horror, and Katie buried her face in her hands, moaning.

  “Yes,” I said. “They suffered.”

  Tears streamed down Jennifer’s face, as an older woman saw us from the window of her home. She ran outside and raced toward the van.

  “Stop, please!” she begged. “Stop! I need your help!”

  I looked through my mirrors and didn’t see any freaks nearby, so I stopped the van.

  “I need a way out of here,” she said. “I’m almost out of food and water and I know I won’t last here much longer.”

  “Are you bitten?” I asked.

  “No!” she exclaimed, showing me her bare legs.

  “I have been inside since this whole thing started. It has been just me and my dog,” she said.

  A few freaks seemed to be approaching from in front of us, and I could see another in the rear view mirror. A decision had to be made, immediately.

  The old woman, who looked to be around sixty years old, froze in horror as she saw the approaching freaks. I quickly decided I couldn’t leave the poor woman to starve to death in her home.

  “Run home now and I’ll follow you!” I told the woman. “Hurry and get your dog and anything important you need to take along.”

  She ran towards her house, and I turned the van around and followed her. I parked in the street and jumped outside.

  “Are you crazy?” Katie said. “We don’t know this woman! What if she’s infected?”

  I looked at her and stated, “I don’t know about you, but I’m going to help her.”

  I grabbed my long knife and walked up to the first freak that was approaching us. My knife sliced into its throat which didn’t seem to have any effect as it continued to come at me. As I stepped backwards I tripped and fell on my back -- the freak lunged forward and ended up on top of me. Its long brown hair was in my face, blocking my vision. I let go of the knife and grabbed its neck, and tried to hold its head up to keep it from biting me.

  In an instant, I saw an ice pick go through the side of the freak’s head. The growling stopped and the freak’s body went limp. Ms. Suzy me get the freak off of me just before two more of them approached us from the opposite direction. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the revolver. From a safe distance I killed both of them.

  Jennifer had been helping the old lady and her dog get into the van when I was attacked.

  “Are you okay? Did it bite you?”

  I looked at my arms and realized that I was lucky. I hadn’t been bitten.

  “I’m okay,” I said.

  We quickly got into the van and continued driving through the subdivision.

  “Thank you for saving me, Ms. Suzy”, I said.

  “Any time,” she said brushing her hair out of her face with a weary smile.

  As we continued driving I began to talk to the old lady.

  “We’re headed to the library. It is supposed to be a relief station. A bus to a relocation center in Dublin is supposed to be leaving from there tonight,” I said.

  “I’m just thankful that you got me out of there,” she said. “You saved my life.”

  “I’m just glad we were able to help you. They may not let you take in the dog,” I mentioned.

  “I know,” the wrinkle faced old lady said.

  Chapter 8

  As we approached the exit of the subdivision we began to hear gunshots in the distance coming from the direction of the library which was only about two miles away. The old lady we had picked up was still clutching her Chihuahua to her chest. It would occasionally yap or bark and the woman would say soothing words to it. The dog probably didn’t weigh ten pounds but it seemed to be a source of strength and comfort for the woman.

  I turned on Cherry Street. By doing so we could bypass the main part of town, but not the horror of what was around us. We passed a few small businesses that seemed to have been overrun by the freaks. Looking down some of the intersecting streets, I realized that Sandy Hills would never recover from this tragedy. The town we lived and worked in was now a place of death and chaos.

  It had been cloudy already, but after we passed Ms. Smith’s Flower Shop I noticed that it was beginning to rain. At first the rain was light, but suddenly the sky fell out. I stopped the van and fumbled with the controls trying to figure out how to turn on the windshield wipers. Once I got them working and I could see the road again I noticed two freaks were hobbling toward us. I hit the gas pedal and tried to go around them, but I ended up hitting the one on the left. It fell to the ground, and I decided to drive over it.

  The van bounced as we moved forward. Jennifer placed her hands on the dashboard in an effort to stabilize herself.

  “We’re going to be at the library soon,” I told everyone.

  I didn’t know what else to say.

  “I wonder if anyone will still be there,” Ms. Suzy commented.

  “Hopefully it won’t be overrun,” said Jennifer.

  “There is the turn,” Katie said.

  As we turned down Shirley Lane I could see a few emergency vehicles in the distance. On the sides of the street there were also a large number of abandoned vehicles. We also noticed that there were relatively few freaks roaming around.

  “I guess there were a lot of people trying to get to the library,” I said.

  “But where did the freaks go?” Ms. Suzy asked.

  “I don’t care where they went,” Katie replied. “I’m just glad they’re not here.”

  “We’re almost there,” I said. The library was located only a short distance around a curve in the road.

  Jennifer screamed as we saw why we had seen relatively few freaks on Shirley Lane. They were all surrounding the library.

  The library was situated on an elevated patch of land surrounded by parking spaces. A couple of years ago a security fence had been erected around it in response to teenage punks vandalizing the building. Currently, there were at least a couple hundred freaks clawing at the fence. They seemed desperate to get inside.

  I stopped the van about 200 yards from the library. I took a quick look around, and there didn’t seem to be any freaks near us.

  “Do you think anyone is inside?” Jennifer asked.

  “I don’t know. But look -- there’s a bus inside of the fence,” I said.

  “That’s got to be the bus they were going to use tonight to get people out of here,” said Ms. Suzy.

  “It doesn’t matter. We have to go back to the grocery store,” said Katie. “There’s no way we’re going to be able to get inside there to find out if anyone is there or not.”

  The little dog barked, and we all took a quick look at the old woman who was sitting there clutching her pet with her eyes tightly closed.

  “Could we find a safe place to wait until tonight?” Jennifer asked. “They might eventually load up on the bus and make a run for it.”

  “It would be crazy to stay that long!” Katie answered. “Don’t you remember that they see better at night?”

  I thought about our options. We needed a way to find out if anyone was in the library. However, we had no chance of killing that many freaks. Also, we couldn’t draw too much attention to ourselves. We didn’t need to take the risk of getting surrounded.

  “What if we made a distraction to lure the freaks away like we did earlier?” I asked.

  “That might work,” said Jennifer.

  With the rain starting to slow down, we began to formulate a plan. Katie didn’t like it, but the rest of us were not willing to go back to the grocery store, at least just yet.

  “It’s your turn to drive,” I told Jennifer. She looked at me, and we switched positions.

  She began to drive the van down a side street that would take us to the other side of the library. I readied a battery powered CD play
er we had in the van with us, and put a few other items into a backpack.

  “Here is good,” I said as we were about two hundred feet away from the library.

  We were now opposite of where we had been before. Instead of facing the front of the library, we were now looking the back side of the building. We still couldn’t see who was inside the bus, but the throng of freaks was terrifying as they pressed themselves up against the fence trying to heave themselves through it. I was surprised the fence was still standing.

  “I’m going to get out set up the distractions,” I said. “Turn the van around so when I’m done we can get out of here fast.”

  I took a look out of the passenger side window and quickly got out. Jennifer then drove towards the same side street we had come from and parked perhaps a hundred feet away from me. With wet feet sloshed through deep puddles to get to one of the abandoned vehicles that littered the side of the street. I opened the lid to the gas tank of a large truck and stuffed in some newspaper. A moment later I ignited the newspaper and dashed away quickly.

  At first, not much happened, but then suddenly a ball of fire shot out of the gas tank. The vehicle was now on fire. The flames started to get higher as the truck became an inferno. I then began looking for a place to set up the CD player. There were a number of businesses very close to the street. I ended up seeing a high wall near the entrance to a dentist office. I quickly turned the volume up as high as it would go, and placed it on the ledge. As the sound of Lady Gaga started blaring, I turned around.

  I rushed back to the street, and looked towards the library. Only a few of the freaks were approaching from the distance. I could fix that. Out of my backpack I pulled out a package of firecrackers that I had obtained from a display in Grocery World. I set them down on the street, lit the fuse, and rushed backwards. Bangs and pops now filled the air.

  However, I was not finished. I pulled out my revolver and looked around for a target. In the distance I could see a freak eating a corpse in a white station wagon. I walked forward about fifty feet, aimed my gun, and fired. The glass shattered, but the bullet had missed the freak. He was now looking directly at me. I fired again, and the bullet got him in the forehead.