Mike Griffin  This is a story I wrote a while back, but it seems to be one of the stories people like the most. I post it here, now, because this story is invaluable as an introduction to a character you’ll all likely being seeing more of soon. I won’t give anything away, and as such I won’t give any clues about anything not presented in the following story itself. So if you like it, stay tuned – more to come soon. And if you don’t like it… well, I didn’t care about your opinion anyway! (I’m lying, I thrive on it. Read it again!)

So sit back in your office chairs or couches or bean bags or whatever you read in, and enjoy this short introduction to an important character and the world they live in. And by all means, leave your thoughts and opinions.


 

I’m sitting in the dark. The power is out. Not just here. Everywhere in town. I write this to let whoever finds it know about what happened.

Best I can guess, it started near the hospital. I would have thought it was sick people, but it wasn’t the way you think. A guy came in, he got bit by his roommate after a fight or something. His arm wasn’t really bleeding, though. But after a while he started going into convulsions, and then he stopped moving. A nurse tried to go find a doctor, I guess to call him on his time of death. But the nurse must have been mistaken, because the dude got up and shuffled up to this other dude and bit his ass. Not his ass. I mean, he bit him. In the neck / shoulder area. That guy starts to scream, the nurse runs back to try to control the guy, and he bites her too. A security guard finally got his fat ass up there and tried to restrain the guy, and a doctor checked on the other guy and the nurse, but the guy died. So the doctor starts to antiseptic the nurse and gauze her or something, and all of a sudden she’s dead too, but the guy who just freaking died is up and coming after the doctor. He freaks the hell out, and starts speaking Roman Catholic gibberish. Everyone was panicking.

Except for me.

I grabbed a fire axe and coldcocked that mother with the back of the handle. And he kept coming. So I figured we’re in a hospital, they can fix him if I seriously injure him, right? So I swung the axe, and slammed it into his leg. It got severed. My bad. They grow back, right? But this guy still keeps coming, trying to get up and falling back down, crawling after me, all that. So I was like screw all this noise, and embedded the axe right into his freaking crazy people eating head. He stopped trying to get me at this point. Some idiot woman asks if I think he’ll be alright, I told her sure, he was just sleeping. Stupid. Then this other woman starts screaming, and I’m all like screaming back and telling her to shut up, and that’s when I realized why she was screaming. Or rather, I realized what wasn’t right. What was out of place.

Where was the fat security guard? Where was the guy he was trying to take down like a donut store clerk trying to keep him away from the leftover glazed?

I got an answer. It figured I would. They both come shuffling out of this room, both covered in blood. The first guy’s eyes had cataracts or something, but then I started thinking about stuff. I had heard him say that he had seen things when he first came in. So he wasn’t blind. So it wasn’t cataracts. This was that clouding over bullcrap that happens to your eyes within the first few minutes after death.

Oh hell no.

That dumb chick asks them if they’re ok. I told her to shut the hell up and get behind me, and take her arm and try to move her. She starts screaming about harassment, and that I touched her bottom, and that she needs a lawyer and a doctor to check her for rape drugs I injected her with. What the hell? She’s raving, and the security guard gets up to her, and he grabs her and starts eating her. Not biting, this mother was full out eating her. I look at the other guy, and he’s coming at me. So is that nurse. And some other guy from the other room. At this point, I was out of there. I ran my ass to the office, got another gun besides the two I already had on me, and started stacking desks, chairs, luggage, potted ferns, paper plates, and whatever else I could find in front of the door. A crappy barricade is still a barricade, right? I check the phones. No service. Freaking telephone company, I hope they die in a horrible monster attack. Oh snap, that wasn’t right, considering the circumstances. Anyway, I try my cell phone, and I can only call local numbers for some reason. How the hell does that work. It’s a cell phone! Anyway, I call 911. No answer. How in the hell does 911 not answer? I tried it again, just in case I dialed the wrong number. Somehow. Still no answer. So I do the next best thing I can think of, and start checking the phone book for Robocop. Turns out he’s not in there, which sucks in about ten different ways.

Then I hear cars crashing outside, and I see a dead guy behind the wheel. Too bad it wasn’t a dead hot chick, or I’d have come and checked if they were ok. Well I guess they wouldn’t be ok if they were dead. Anyway, this car is all crashed up, and this guy is dead and not moving, and the telephone pole he hit was like “What?” and not caring, and I was at the window with a beer wondering what would happen next. And all of a sudden, the worst thing that could possibly happen in the middle of a situation like this happened. I was out of beer.

I threw everything out of my way, went out the door, got in my car and made for the beer store. Yes, there is a beer store in this town. You want to make something of it? I get to the beer store, and it’s closed. On a Friday. At 6:30. I’m standing there like an idiot, trying to think of what I should do next, when I see all these people running down the street. I figured there must be free hot dogs or something at the park, so I haul ass after them. Unless it was snowcones. But snowcones kick ass too, so I didn’t care either way. But I’m running after them, and they’re all looking behind them, and I’m all grinning and waving and telling them how much I enjoy hot dogs, and none of them noticed me. I figured they were looking behind me, so I looked behind me too. And it was exactly what I thought. Someone had started a goddamned zombie apocalypse again. Well, that isn’t the first thing I thought. The first thing I thought was how weird it was to see like a couple dozen weirdos walking down Garrison St., falling all over each other and moaning like a bunch of drunks at a frat party. The second thing was me rationalizing that they were undoubtedly after my free hot dogs and snowcones, and I was not about to let that happen. Then a guy screamed zombies were going to kill him, and it all kind of clicked into place.

So I kept running, regardless of the fulfillment of my refreshment seeking or not, and followed the panicky idiots into this building, where a bunch of other idiots proclaimed it to be a zombie shelter, and that everyone was safe. I asked who had a gun, and two guys did – hunting rifles. Better that than nothing. I still had two handguns and a shotgun. I asked if there would be hot dogs, everyone looked at me funny, so I turned my attention back to the situation at hand, completely giving up on the hot dog situation. And of course, the zombies were all over the front of the building, trying to get in, and everyone inside was freaking out, and then someone coughed and I thought they were going to be lynched. So I figured this was a bad deal and slipped out the back and tried to see what I could see. Not much, undead were everywhere, the sun was going down, I had no beer, and had a limited amount of ammunition. Which meant it was time to think of a plan. What would George Peppard do in this situation? Get eaten by the living dead. Crap, that doesn’t help. I needed to start thinking rationally. I needed to be someplace with good shelter – someplace where nothing and no one could get it. Where could I not get in? I was never able to get into the fancy dance club on 32nd St., but that was a different situation than this altogether. Where could I fortify some defenses, have food and water and more ammunition?

Wal-Mart was straight ahead, and I was like Michael Johnson running for victory. Or Michael Winslow running for his life, I was making so many ridiculous noises from running the three miles to get here. Wal-Mart was full of people, naturally, trying to buy some sort of supplies at the last second. Which was stupid, because there were still zombies all over. I knew I couldn’t just shoot everyone and lock the doors, so I kept running, trying to get to something more plausible. I could have kicked myself for not staying in my office – it had food and beverages (except beer, goddammit), weapons and ammunition, radio and television, flashlights and supplies, Kidd and Play, and all the other essentials to get through a crisis like this. I could try to make it back there, but it was across town, and I had no safe way to get there. I needed a car. I look around, and see this timid looking pale guy in a Buick, and I’m like pow, this is the guy. I ran up, opened his door, pulled a Tommy Vercetti and tear down the street toward the office. At this point, I had no idea who was alive or who was dead, so part of me is saying just hit people if they get in my way, the other part is telling me that I just stole a car because a guy ate people at the hospital and I ran out of beer and Robocop is unlisted and just running people down would put the icing on the cake I’d get at the Welcome To Crazytown party. So I’m swerving around people, or what used to be people, and trying not to get hit by other drivers, and some nutbars who are shooting at anything that moves, just trying to get across town as fast as possible in a car that was built to be the slowest thing short of the Flintstonemobile. I actually made it without hitting anyone or being shot, and ran back into the office, re-barricaded it, checked my messages that weren’t there, and grabbed one of my friend’s fruity wine coolers as an emergency substitute during these harsh times. I turned on the radio, and the power went out. I was like great, I freaking broke the electricity by using it responsibly and in its intended fashion, figures. I looked out the window, saw it was still bad, pulled out my laptop (yay for batteries) and started to record this. And here we are. I am typing. Right now. Type type type. See – it’s live.

It will only be a matter of time before the living dead come marching up my stairs, knock on my door, and come in. Actually, I doubt they would knock, they would probably just walk in like some rude son of a bitches that think they can just waltz in and eat your stuff any time they want. Point is, I have most of my weapons near me now. And I will wait. And I will not go down quietly. I’ll probably be screaming like a bitch if they get me. But I don’t want that to happen, and neither do you, the reader. I hope. I better not be alive if you don’t hope I’m alive when you read this, or I’ll mess up your day. Anyway, here I sit. Waiting. In the dark. My laptop’s battery is almost dead. I’m going to shut it off now to conserve enough energy for whoever finds it to read this. Unless everything is fine. Which is just as good. We should go get those snowcones.

2 Comments
  1. Author

    Thanks! Keep an eye out – more good stuff is to come!

  2. cornflake 12 years ago

    brill i hope you can write as good as you did with this page keep it comin =)

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