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

by Zachary Stone

  For a little while, we were taking out the freaks with little or no difficulty. My mind started to drift and it gave me an opportunity to think about my situation. I realized that there were a few people now residing at the church who were not regular members. Linwood, Meredith, and Sam all fit into this category. They probably lived in the area, knew some of the membership, and had no better option than to seek shelter at the church.

  My train of thought was broken as I saw a larger number of freaks were approaching from the nearby timber. I realized we needed to move.

  We all got back in the truck and continued down the road.

  I decided it would be a good time to turn off the stereo and find a good place to hide. We had made a lot of noise for an extended period of time, and we needed to find a way to get back to the church.

  “THERE’S NO NEED TO MAKE NOISE ANY MORE!” I shouted. “TURN IT OFF.”

  A moment later the music ended and there was a suddenly a deceptive sense of calm.

  Up ahead and to the right, I could see what looked like an old country store. The sign plastered on the wall of the business read, “Bob's Bait Shop and More.”

  It was a small business and there were no other shops nearby. I decided to investigate and see what was behind it.

  I pulled around to the back of the store, and saw a small building that was attached to the store.

  “We need to wait and let the freaks thin out,” I stated. “They will forget they ever heard anything.”

  “I know this shop,” Linwood informed me. “We can stock up on ammo here. Old man Kapowski runs this place. It belongs to his son. I know where they keep their weapons cache.”

  “Can we get in?” I asked. “They probably have it locked.”

  “Don't worry about that,” he said.

  Linwood reached under his seat once again and pulled out a black case. He opened his door, climbed down, and walked towards the entrance to the attached building.

  “Cover me,” he stated.

  I turned off the engine, put the keys in my pocket, and climbed out.

  Meredith was already down from the back of the truck by the time my feet hit the ground.

  “We can't use any of our guns,” I said. “We need to be quiet so they can disperse.”

  “That won't be a problem,” Meredith stated, with her machete already in her hand.

  I drew my blade out of its sheath and peeked around the corner of the building. There were a couple freaks headed towards us in the distance, but it seemed most of them hadn’t followed us.

  Linwood opened the small case of lock picking tools and proceeded to work on the door. Meredith and I guarded the perimeter. When an occasional freak would come around the corner of the building, we would swiftly take it out with our handheld weapons.

  Finally, the lock was picked and we entered the small building. I walked towards the door that led to main building and gave it a gentle push. It was already open.

  “Be careful,” I said in a hushed voice. “There could be one of them in here.”

  I took the lead as I held tightly onto my butcher’s knife. The inside of the store was very dark, and I couldn’t see very well. As I carefully walked down an outer aisle, something brushed against my arm and I jerked, but nothing happened. I realized it was just one of the dozens of fishing poles that were on display.

  Ahead of me I heard something fall over and hit the wooden floor of the store, but I couldn’t make anything out in the gloom.

  To my right I could see that one of the windows was covered by a blanket.

  “Pull the blanked away from the window,” I whispered to Meredith.

  She proceeded to make her way towards the window. The moment she pulled down the blanket and light flooded into the room revealing a horrible sight. A man, now a zombie was handcuffed to a length of pipe running along the wall. His body was rocking back and forth trying to get free from the cuffs. When he saw us he lunged towards us with his mouth open.

  “That's old man Kapowski,” Linwood said.

  Attached to a glass display case several feet away from him was a note written on a piece of yellow notebook paper. I removed the note and started to read it out loud.

  To Anyone Who May Find Me

  My Name is Peter Kapowski and I'm the manager of this establishment. I've been watching the news about the outbreak that is happening, and I'm afraid that I am infected. Ever since the meteor shower I have felt sick. I don't know for sure if I’ll turn into one of those zombies they are talking about on television, but I don't want to take the chance of hurting anyone. I'm writing this note to ask anyone who enters this building to take me out if I've changed into one of the creatures. I do not want to live as one of them. I pray that God will take my soul before I turn into one of them, if I do turn into one of them.

  I balled up the note and threw it to the floor. If it was his wish not to live as a freak, I would be glad to make sure he didn’t have to. I lifted up my blade and stabbed him through the eye socket.

  “Where did you say the weapons stash was located?” I asked Linwood.

  “It's right through here,” he said.

  I followed him to a back room. I saw a large chest of drawers in a bedroom.

  “Let’s push this out of the way,” Linwood told us.

  We removed the chest and behind it was a hollowed out portion of the wall. It contained a number of boxes of ammo, several handguns, and what looked like a machine gun of some kind.

  “Now this is what I'm talking about,” Linwood said. “He showed me all this a couple of years ago after we had been out fishing together.”

  He pulled out two semi-automatic pistols and attached an extended, thirty round magazine to each one.

  “Here, take these,” he said.

  “Didn't some of the folks in Washington want to ban these a while back?” I asked.

  “Yeah, they felt that extended magazines were too dangerous for ordinary people to have,” he said.

  “Maybe they would’ve felt differently if they had known a zombie apocalypse was about to start,” Meredith said.

  “Don't call them zombies,” I requested.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “I hate that description,” I told her.

  “What's so bad about calling them zombies?” she asked.

  “Look, I can deal with those things outside being called freaks, creatures, monsters, or the infected. You can even call them dead folks like some of the people at the church do. But please, don't dare call them zombies. That makes them sound like something out of a horror movie – something that shouldn’t exist,” I explained.

  “Well, life has turned into a horror movie,” Meredith stated. “We can either face what we’re dealing with or deny what we’re facing.”

  “Hey, I'm willing to face them. I've killed as many or more freaks as you have. But I cannot accept that I'm living in one of the horrible nightmares I have read about or watched on television,” I said. “If I'm just dealing with infected people or freaks, I can try to have hope that there might be hope for a normal life again. But if they are truly zombies...”

  “Alright! I won't call them zombies,” she said shaking her head as if she thought I was making a fuss over nothing.

  “Thanks,” I responded.

  “If you two would stop arguing over stupid words, we could get loaded up on these weapons before we go back outside,” said Linwood.

  I proceeded to load up on weapons from the stash. In addition to filling up a backpack full of ammo for my revolver and my new semi-automatic pistol, I picked out a couple of single shot Derringers. I put one in a holster attached to my waist, and strapped the other to my ankle. In addition, I found a small, concealable pistol that I thought would be ideal for Jennifer.

  While we waited to make sure the freaks outside were not aware of our presence, I searched the shop for anything else that could be of use. I ended up finding a medical kit in one of the aisles and some antibiotics in the bathroom. I
t turned out that the old man had also lived in the building, and he had quite a stash of medications. One container was labeled ‘Amoxicillin’.

  “Meredith, come over here,” I called out.

  “What do you need?

  “I think you should take a couple of these,” I said. “Antibiotics. Maybe they will help you.”

  “I don't have anything to lose,” she responded.

  She took two of the pills, grabbed a hot soda from a non-functional cooler, and started to drink.

  “Of course if we’re dealing with a virus it might not help much,” I added.

  I handed her the bottle. “Keep taking one of these every twelve hours.”

  Looking outside I saw that the road in front of the store was now free of freaks. I took one last look around the store and decided it was time to go.

  “We need to try to head back to the church,” I said. “Is there another way to the church other than the way we came?”

  “There is a way,” Linwood stated. “It would be a long drive though.”

  “We still have a half tank of diesel – let’s do it,” I said.

  We exited the back of the building and got back into the truck.

  “Which way do I go?” I asked.

  “Turn right and keep on going until you see the sign that says Abercorn Road,” Linwood said. “Turn down it and it will allow us to circle around to the other side of the church.”

  I started the engine of the vehicle and proceeded down the road. The sun was shining brightly and the freaks in the road seemed very disoriented. We were able to dodge most of them. The few that did manage to slap the vehicle didn’t even come close to reaching the window. When there were several of them in the road, Meredith would take them out with the shotgun or her new Glock.

  Upon reaching Abercorn Road, I realized that we were about to drive down a dirt road lined with trees.

  “I'm not sure if this is safe,” I said.

  “What do you mean?” Linwood answered.

  “There is almost no room to turn around if we get overrun by the freaks,” I said.

  “The road opens up about a mile from here,” Linwood said.

  “Alright,” I stated.

  I proceeded to drive down the road. The branches on either side of the road hung low, and a few of them scraped on the windshield. Through my rear view mirror, I could see Meredith drop lower herself to avoid being hit by them.

  A few moments later, the sight of a freak in the middle of the dirt road made me hit the brakes. Before I knew it, Meredith fired and the buckshot impacted the female freak’s head, removing chunks of flesh and bone as the creature hit the ground. Suddenly two additional freaks then appeared in the road.

  Meredith shot one of the freaks in the head; the second approached my door and started pounding on the side of vehicle. I was starting to reach for my revolver when I heard the blast of Meredith’s shotgun. She’d fired upon the freak at close range, and brain matter had sprayed into the truck.

  She hopped out of the vehicle and looked into my window.

  “There's zombie-brain in your mustache,” she said.

  She took a look around the vehicle and climbed back into the truck.

  I wiped my face of the specks of goo and looked ahead. The path was clear so I continued on.

  Eventually, I could see mobile homes on either side of the road. In front of one of the homes I could see three heavy set women sitting in plastic lawn chairs. The tallest and oldest of them was carrying a rifle. She proceeded to walk out in the middle of the road forcing me to stop.

  “Hello!” I called out.

  “Don't you know this is a private road?” she said.

  “I'm sorry, but we’re just passing through,” I responded.

  “Unless you live on this road you’re not allowed to use it,” she said. “I heard the gunfire. I hope you’re not going to be attracting the dead people this way.”

  “How about you just let us move on so we can go about our way. We don't want any trouble with you,” I told her.

  “Too bad, you already got trouble!” she shouted.

  I turned and saw another woman come out of a trailer on the other side of the road. She was also armed and had her rifle pointed at us.

  “Get out of the vehicle, now,” she said.

  I could see through the rear view mirror that Meredith had her shotgun trained on the woman. This was now a standoff.

  “Look, there is no need for this,” I said.

  Before I could say anything else, I heard Meredith start speaking.

  “Aren’t you Mrs. Laura Burnsed's granddaughter?” she asked.

  The woman in sweat pants and a dirty t-shirt looked perplexed.

  “Do I know you?” she asked.

  “Well, your grandmother gave me piano lessons when I was a teenager. I hated them, but my mother made me go to her house twice a week. Your grandmother would talk to me about all of her children and grandchildren,” Meredith stated. “I don't think she’d like the fact her grandchild was pulling a gun on innocent people.”

  “Look here, woman,” the older woman said. “You have trespassed onto a private road and into a private neighborhood. There are consequences for that.”

  As I looked around I saw a few more people appear to see what was going on. They were mainly women, but there were also a few men.

  “I don't want to shoot you, but you’re in the wrong and we have mouths to feed,” the old woman stated.

  “So you think killing us would be a good example for your family?” Meredith stated.

  Listening to the debate between Meredith and the fat woman, I considered my options. I could just hit the gas and try to escape, but there were now even children standing in the road watching us. I didn’t want to run over them. Also, it was possible that we could be shot as we drove off.

  We needed a distraction.

  I then saw Linwood putting one of the red shells into a small, sawed off shotgun.

  “These are people,” I told him.

  “I know,” he said quietly. “But I'm not getting out of this truck. It's them or us.”

  I looked out the window and interrupted the argument between Meredith and the fat woman who seemed to be the leader of the group.

  “Listen, what is it that you need?” I urged. “We don't need to risk someone getting hurt.”

  “We need lots of things,” she said, pointing her rifle at my head.

  I then noticed a younger woman in front of the vehicle with a hand gun pointed at me. My heart started to race as I realized my life might be about to end.

  “Well, there are lots of things out there, and you can get them without killing people,” I said.

  “For example, just down the road there is tackle shop with food and other supplies,” I told her.

  “Where?” she asked.

  “Over there at Bob's Tackle Shop,” I said. “It isn’t a grocery store, but there are canned goods, snacks, sodas, medical kits, and all sorts of things.”

  She started to lower her rifle, a little.

  “All we’re trying to do here is a take a shortcut to get to the other side of the road, and we will be out of your hair. You’ll never hear from us again,” I said.

  A young woman standing beside her then spoke up.

  “Momma, why don't we just let them go? Why do we have to do this?” she asked.

  “Because we will do what it takes to survive,” her mother said.

  “But we’re not bad people,” her daughter responded. “If we kill them what does that make us?”

  “Listen to her,” I said. “Just let us go and we will be on our way.”

  “Or, since you know where we’re, you’ll come back with your friends to rob us!” the woman yelled at me.

  She raised her rifle yet again.

  “Don't you dare think about it,” Meredith told the woman. “You may get a shot off, but you’ll have a hole in your gut. How can you take care of your family if you’re dead?”

/>   Linwood then carefully handed me the sawed off shotgun.

  He quietly said two words.

  “Dragon’s breath.”

  I knew what he wanted me to do. It was not my desire to do it, but the paranoid woman was forcing the issue. I had tried to reason with her, but she wouldn’t listen.