Chris and Robin were hanging out and playing pool, as they usually did at the end of their sixty-hour workweek, in the 'man cave,' which was an old tool shed in Chris's backyard.
"Probably glued to his Xbox or something," Chris answered, cursing as he scratched on the eight ball, losing yet another round and another five bucks.
"Dude, don't say that," Robin said with a gag. "Xbox is his code word for surfing porn sites. Do you really want to know what kind of sick kinks someone like Ryan is into?"
"Good point. Why are we friends with him again?"
"Because he brings the beer. Rack 'em up, loser," Robin replied, casually sinking the eight ball that Chris missed with a smug expression. "Hey, what was that?"
A loud thud against the side of the shed drew their attention from the game. Seconds later, the door flew open and Ryan stumbled in, out of breath and covered in blood.
"Geez, man! What happened to you?" Chris asked, eyeing the nasty gash on Ryan’s forehead with concern.
"And where's the beer? Did you get mugged on the way over?" Robin added with noticeably less concern.
"Lock the door, guys. I think I'm being followed."
"Ryan, this is a freaking tool shed. What do you think locking the door is going to do?" Robin asked with a snort.
"Never mind that," Chris said through gritted teeth as he pushed past Ryan to the door. "My wife and kids are in the house. If you did something stupid to put them in danger I swear to god, Ryan, I will garden weasel your nut sack." He looked out across the darkening yard. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.
"Nah, man. I came up the back way,” Ryan assured him, still panting and leaning on the wall for support. “But seriously, close the door! I told you we should have built a bunker."
Chris was pretty sure Ryan was being paranoid and stupid, but just to be safe, he circled the building and peeked out into the alley that ran from his property down into a nearby subdivision. Seeing nothing more suspicious than a couple of kids riding their bikes, he went back into the shed and leveled Ryan with a look of exasperation.
"Okay numb nuts, what the hell is going on?"
"Dang, y’all! Thanks for the freaking sympathy. I’m only bleeding to death over here," Ryan said with a comically pained expression. Chris and Robin just stared blankly until he spoke again. "Okay, remember what I said earlier about Conklin? How he’s got to be infected? Y’all didn’t believe me, but I was totally right. He’s a zombie, guys. He’s it, patient zero, man!"
"Ryan,” Chris pinched the bridge of his nose and exhaled loudly. Jokes were jokes, but Ryan was taking this too far. “I saw Bobby after lunch. Give the guy a break already. He's clearly got the flu."
"Will you shut up and listen?" Ryan pleaded. "He's sick alright, but that ain't the flu. I followed him after shift."
"You what?" Chris and Robin shouted at the same time.
"I followed him," Ryan continued, putting his hand up to stop further protest. "Don’t look at me like that. I followed him because he was acting strange and it didn’t look like he was going home. He didn't even get in his car. He went wandering into the woods and followed the old railroad tracks down to the lake.”
“He made it to the lake?” Chris asked. He knew the trail Ryan was talking about because he often walked to the lake with his kids when the weather was mild. It was at least two miles and Chris couldn’t imagine that someone who looked as sick as Bobby did would be able to make that walk. For that matter, he couldn’t imagine someone as out of shape as Ryan was making it that far either.
“It took him a while, but yeah, he made it,” Ryan said with a nod. “Anyway, that’s not important. What happened next is messed up. There were a couple of high school kids setting up for a bonfire on the beach. They were goofing off and not paying any attention to Conklin until he attacked them."
"What do you mean he attacked them?" Robin asked with frown.
"I mean he ran out of the woods, jumped on them, and started eating their faces!” Ryan shouted. “When I realized what he was doing, I tried to stop him, but the freak bit me too!"
"Wait," Robin interrupted. "You got bit?”
“Obviously,” Ryan said sarcastically, gesturing to the gash on his forehead and another on his arm.
“And you ran here?" Robin asked.
"Well yeah," Ryan shrugged. “I wanted to warn you guys in case he shows up at the plant and starts trying to eat our brains on Monday.”
"Why didn't you go to the hospital?" Chris asked, not unreasonably.
"Because this is serious, guys," Ryan said, shaking his head in disbelief. “What, is this a game to you? I’m telling you that the zombie apocalypse is real and it’s happening in our own backyard. It’s time to stop talking about what we might do and take some action.”
“Ryan…” Chris began with a sigh, but Robin cut him off.
"Now hang on," Robin said, covertly winking at Chris. “Ryan has a point. We have been planning for this for a while, so we should be taking this seriously. Especially considering how badly he screwed up.”
“Huh? What do you mean, I screwed up?” Ryan asked.
“You’ve been bit,” Robin said in a lazy drawl. “You’re infected and you showed up here, compromising the base of operations. We all made a pact, Ryan. Don’t you remember?”
Ryan’s eyes went wide as he remembered the conversation they’d had one day. In the event that any one of them was bitten by a zombie, the others vowed to kill them before the transformation was allowed to complete.
“Oh come on guys,” he said with a note of panic. “I’m not a zombie. He barely scratched the skin.”
"I dunno," Chris said, picking up on Robin's train of thought. It was typical of Ryan to try to pull one over on them, but as usual, he didn’t think his joke through. Chris smiled as he pulled a pair of hedge trimmers off the wall and advanced on Ryan. "You broke the rules, Ryan. Never compromise the base camp."
Ryan stumbled backwards, knocking over a pyramid of empty beer cans. “That’s not funny, Chris!"
"Sorry man," Robin shrugged, stifling a laugh as Ryan flailed around on the floor. He picked a small hatchet from the hook on the wall and took as step forward. "Rules are rules, buddy."
Completely panicked, Ryan jumped up and hurled himself at Chris. He would have impaled himself on the blades of the hedge trimmers if Chris hadn’t moved them to the side in time. Both men tumbled over the side of the old and worn sofa.
"Hey man, chill out!" Chris shouted, letting go of the trimmers so that no one would get hurt. “It was a joke, man. You're going to hurt yourself!" But Ryan didn't chill out. Instead, he groped blindly at Chris' face, clawing at him and nearly gouging out Chris’ eye. "Knock it off, jackass!" Chris shoved Ryan to the floor and crawled over the other side of the sofa.
"Um, Chris, I don't think he's messing with us," Robin said in a higher than usual voice.
"Huh?” Chris rubbed his face under his eye where Ryan had scratched him. Looking up, he found Ryan in his face again, only this time he noticed the whites of his eyes were bloodshot red and the normally blue irises were a muddy green. The skin around the gash on his forehead was green and pulsed with blackened and raised veins.
“Holy fuh…” Chris stammered as Ryan lunged at him. With a burst of adrenaline, he ducked under the pool table just in time to avoid being mauled by the mindless beast that their friend had become. There was a dull crack and a loud thump on the table above his head, followed by silence that was punctuated by heavy breathing. After a minute, Chris finally got the courage to peek out from under the table.
Robin stood paralyzed in shock, still gripping the handle of the hatchet that was now buried in the back of Ryan's skull.
"Oh god, Chris. What did I do?” he asked in a hysterical whisper. “What are we going to do?" Ryan might have been a major tool, and he was trying to kill Chris, but still, Robin didn’t think he deserved such an awful and messy end.
"You saved our lives," Chris said with a grunt as he stood up. When
he looked over at the body lying on his pool table, he immediately wished he hadn’t. They needed a plan. As Chris turned away, he caught sight of the flu shot flyer he had brought home earlier in the week. "What we're going to do is load him in the back of the truck and dump his ass at the hospital."
"Hospital?" Robin looked at Ryan's lifeless body. "I don't think there's much the hospital can do for him now."
"Probably not," Chris said with a shrug. "But ya know what? Ryan was right about one thing. There sure are an awful lot of people getting the bird flu. I reckon that's what got him in the end."
Robin stared slack jawed at Chris, in complete disbelief. "Bird flu?"
“Yep,” Chris drawled, pulling up the address on his cell phone. “Looks like Presby’s got a special quarantine unit for these ‘unusual’ cases. We don’t even have to go in.”
“Chris,” Robin’s voice cracked, despite his best efforts to keep calm. “He’s dead, man. Ryan’s dead and I killed him.”
"This is a very deadly outbreak," Chris said, shaking his head at the tragic turn of events. “I don’t think the hospital is going to ask too many questions, if you catch my drift.”
Robin looked down at the hatchet handle, which was no doubt covered with his fingerprints, and recalled the billboard he had seen earlier. No questions asked, it read, and gave a phone number to a hotline to report suspected bird flu victims. "No,” he said at last. “No, you're right. It was bird flu. We need to get him to the hospital."
They loaded Ryan's body into the bed of Chris' truck and drove to the bright yellow quarantine tent that was set up outside Presbyterian hospital. The two attendants, wearing full body containment suits, asked no questions as they quickly pulled Ryan’s body out of the truck. After a trip to the car wash, Chris dropped Robin off at his apartment and went back to the man cave. The damage to the pool table was beyond repair. The old sofa that had been on its last legs now had no legs.
Chris dug the gas can out from behind a pile of broken beach chairs. There wasn't much, but the rich fumes that stung his nose said there was enough for his purposes. Carefully, as not to splash any on himself, Chris doused the old sofa in gasoline and lit a match, engulfing it instantly in flames. Maggie had been bugging him for years about replacing the old shed with a deluxe model. In the morning, he would surprise her with a trip to Home Depot, where he would let her pick out the fanciest shed they could find.
He watched, garden hose in hand, as the old structure burned, ready to douse the flames if they got out of control or came too close to the wooden fence that enclosed the yard. After a few minutes, the blaze was bright enough to see from the house and Maggie came out to join him.
"Do I even want to know how the fire started?"
"I knocked over the gas can and it hit the sofa. I know how much you've wanted a new shed, so I figured burning it down was safer than trying to clean up the gasoline," Chris lied easily.
“I would have guessed that idiot Ryan dropped a lit cigarette or something,” Maggie said with a snort. “I still haven’t forgiven him for blowing up the pool last Fourth of July.”
“Don’t worry,” Chris said with a chuckle as he put his arm around his wife. “Ryan won’t be causing you any headaches anymore.”
They stood together in silence until the shed burned down to its foundation. Chris put out the embers with the hose and they walked together back to the house.
"Yikes, babe! What did you do to your eye?" Maggie asked once they reached the lit back porch.
“Hm?” Chris glanced at his reflection in the sliding door and frowned. All of the skin under his eye, where Ryan had scraped him, was tinted green and riddled with dark veins. "I’m sure it’s nothing. I'll make an appointment with the doctor in the morning."
Even a Broken Clock...
I DON’T BUY IT
Anyone else in the mid-cities area noticing a lot of people are getting the bird flu? Have you also noticed the bird flu symptoms are pretty strange? I never get the flu because I get my shots every year, so I don’t really know a whole lot, but I looked it up online. The flu is supposed to be like a really bad cold that sometimes makes you throw up and sometimes it gives you the runs. My uncle got sick and everyone says he has the bird flu. But that isn’t what happened to him at all. His skin turned green and he’s got this nasty cut on his neck that’s all black and oozing. His eyes are all red and last week my aunt caught him trying to eat the neighbor’s kids. How messed up is that? I don’t think that’s the flu. To me, that’s a zombie. I think they are calling it the bird flu because if people knew that zombies were real they would panic. I’m not saying you should panic, but maybe it’s time to stock up on water and canned goods and probably a lot of guns.
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WHAT THE GOVERNMENT ISN’T TELLING US
Bird flu.
Bird. Freaking. Flu.
Are y’all really that dumb? Take a look around you. Does something seem not right to you? Have people from your neighborhood gone missing? Did anyone you know get taken away to a ‘specialist’ hospital because they are suffering from the ‘drug resistant’ ‘bird flu’ that seems to be going around? Are you now afraid to go out at night because of an increase in ‘gang violence’?
DOES ANY OF THIS SEEM SUSPICIOUS TO YOU?????
Infections are happening daily. What started it? Surely, our government wouldn’t lie to us, would they? That’s right. Our great government, who regulates what goes into our water and what we eat, wouldn’t lie to us. Certainly, the same government who sends airplanes into the sky to rain toxins down upon our unsuspecting heads would only have our best interests in mind, right?
Wake up, folks.
There is no bird flu. This is the flippin’ apocalypse AND IT IS SPREADING!
It is time to protect ourselves, America. The government won’t protect you. They are deliberately trying to turn us into mindless zombies. There are plenty of idiots out there blindly following along. Don’t be one of them. It’s time to stand up to the TERROROCRACY and take back our land!
INVESTIGATE THE CDC
The CDC claims that there is no evidence to suggest that we have entered the zombie apocalypse and I am calling bullshit. The so-called ‘bird flu’ pandemic that started in the rural south has spread north and into Canada faster than any other viral breakout since the invention of antibiotics. There is no bird flu. There are only zombies and they are everywhere. I used to make jokes about how the zombie apocalypse had already happened, citing the massive swarms of hive-minded hipsters who made my daily commute hell. Now I walk to work fearing not only the ignorant cyclists who try to mow me down, but also the flesh-eating meat sacks that paw at me as if I’m the last dress on a clearance rack.
The Center for Disease Control has one job: to protect the population from harmful diseases and epidemics through a constant stream of information. The lines of communication from the protectors to the people have been closed. Instead of warning us, they have chosen to bury their collective heads in the sand and pretend that this is not a problem. If I thought it would do any good, I’d defect to Europe in a heartbeat. But already, reported cases of ‘bird flu’ have been showing up in France and Belgium. It won’t end there. Unless something is done, and done soon, we are going to enter the apocalypse phase of the zombie apocalypse.
A Minor Correction
An Important Message from the Center for Disease Control
Last month, we reported that the viral outbreak that
is currently spreading across the country was a highly contagious and drug resistant strain of the HPAI H5N1 bird flu. It has come to our attention that this assessment was incorrect. The virus, which we believe originated with individuals who came into contact with contaminated space debris, appears to spread through any and all contact with the infected. Further, it appears that barring infection, interacting with the infected could prove to be fatal, as they seem to have a compulsion to consume human flesh.
In light of this new information, the Center for Disease Control acknowledges that what we are dealing with is indeed a zombie epidemic. Please keep in mind that there is, at this time, no reason to panic. Below is an outline of steps you can take to prevent the risk of infection.
1. If you see something, say something. Report all suspected infected persons to the CDC hotline. All calls will be kept confidential.
2. Do not engage the infected. If you suspect someone is infected, do not make contact. When possible, remove yourself from the situation immediately.
3. Wash your hands frequently.
4. If you suspect that you have become infected, please go immediately to your local quarantine center. Centers have been set up in all population areas and are easily identified by the symbol of a green skull on a black background.
Additional information and updates will be provided by the CDC as they arise.
The Farewell Tour
“So, it’s real?” Jayden Winslow looked up from the guitar in his hands and squinted at his bandmate. Tory Erickson stood in the open doorway of the garage, panting and covered with blood.
“Dude, did you hear anything I just said?”
“Uh, no,” Jayden admitted, pointing to the headphones he had just removed. “I was trying to tune this piece of crap for you. It’s complete trash. Why didn’t you get that Telecaster I told you about on Craig’s list? It was a steal.”
“Jayden, seriously, forget about the stupid guitar and listen to me,” Tory begged. “I just shot my grandpa because he tried to eat my dad’s brains. Yes, it’s freaking real. Haven’t you been watching the news? The government finally admitted that this isn’t the bird flu. We’re in the middle of the freaking zombie apocalypse! We can’t stay here.”
Going Green Page 4