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Zombies and Stuff

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Literature Text

 Prologue

How the hell did I end up here? In this place… Is it a sanctuary?  More like a prison now, at least for me anyhow. Maybe if I could just get on the salvage team it wouldn’t be so bad.  But then, why would I want to stick my neck out for these yahoos? To get out! To get out behind the walls that’s why! Blasted Ty, what a jerk!

 Two months now in this new world of ours. To whole months since the TV channels were flooded with the news of virus outbreak. Like the swine flu… Like swine flu crossed with mad cow disease they said… Those lying bastards had no idea what they were talking about! Before long it was martial law and not much after there was no law at all. Just like in the movies. “Ha ha ha ha HA!” oh that’s rich!  The movies. HA! They always say that in the movies don’t they? How cliché… “Dammit, dammit, dammit, DAMMIT!” If only I hadn’t met that bumbling buffoon Atrox! If it weren’t for Atrox I wouldn’t be stuck behind these damnable walls in the first place.

 

Chapter 1: Atrox

 When news of the virus first broke people were advised to stay inside. They were scared enough that for the most part they did. But most people don’t have all that much food in their houses. They would leave to get supplies but they would never come back, and the infected just kept multiplying. Soon there was no power, no running water, and no one to call for help. Sure there were a few small military groups still alive but they had holed themselves up. They weren’t about to risk their own lives for the few stragglers that remained.

 I was fine for the first month. I always hated shopping so the pantry would get stocked once every three weeks.  Fortunately I had just stocked up when the news broke. Cereal, ramen, chips, energy drinks and a few protein bars for good variety.  Sure there was no anime and no internet to keep me occupied, but handheld games and manga are just fine by me. Hell, I probably could’ve stayed in my apartment for another two weeks had I thought to ration my supplies. I guess planning ahead has never been my strong suit. It had been fairly wet so water hadn’t been an issue but I had run out of food.

I decided it was time for me to leave. I couldn’t stay in my apartment anymore.  Before the power had been lost the news said that ‘They’ mostly relied on sound. I figured that if I was quite enough I could make it to the store without much trouble. The store that I had in mind was one of those big super centers a few miles away where I usually stocked up on ramen. It was out by the freeway away from most of the residential areas so I figured that the chances were decent that it hadn’t been raided too much yet. The few people that had survived didn’t want to go far from their homes, or so I assumed.

 I packed my backpack with spare clothes, filled a few water bottles, and grabbed my dusty baseball bat. The bat felt so much heavier than it used to. I guess that’s what I get for not being more active. I peered out of the window. ”Hmm only a few zombies, I’ll be able to sneak around them if I’m quiet.” I took the stairs down to the ground level and left the building through the side entrance. Careful not to kick any of the refuse that was lying around and proceeded down the alley, hunched over and carefully watching what I stepped on. Alleyway after alleyway, a couple parking lots, and a few side streets, I finally made my way to the store that I had in mind. There had been a few zombies on the way but I had been quite enough to sneak around. The pools of blood mixed with garbage, the hand lying on the ground, its owner nowhere to be seen, none of it really bothered me much. You see that stuff in all the games.

  The store looked mostly intact compared to the neighborhoods I had just traveled through. The electric door had been pried open and there were a few broken windows but most of it looked the way it always had. I peered in through the doors. There was trash, a few open packages, and some empty bottles strewn about the floor but more importantly the shelves were still at least halfway stocked. I went to the first checkout line, grabbed a bag of chips, and before I knew it they were gone. I grabbed another, and then another, and chased it all down with a warm soda. For the first time since the outbreak I felt a glimmer of happiness.

I got up to look around the store but before I could turn about something hit me from behind sending me sprawling across the floor as my bat went flying. “Oh crap!” A zombie had come out of nowhere and not one like the others I had passed on my way to store. This one was fast. I barely had time to turn my head around and it was already back on its feet ready to make another run at me. I looked behind me, my bat had hit one of the checkout booths and wasn’t far off. I scrambled towards it, my sneakers squeaking and sliding across the slick linoleum floor. By the time I reached it and had it in hand the zombie was nearly on top of me. Its checker’s outfit was stained with a crimson ‘V’ in the front and its name tag read Edward.  I swung the bat up and clocked Edward right in the temple. He fell at my side with an audible thud. “That was a close one… Sorry Ed.”  I laid there for a while catching my breath, I couldn’t really tell you how long. Then I started hearing a strange noise.  Is that… whistling?

 I stood up and walked over to the doors. Crossing the parking lot was a rather tall person and of all things, whistling and kind of  ‘dance walking’ every few steps on their way to the store.  “What the hell” are they mad? The person looked out of place, even in a apocalyptic hellscape. They were wearing a green hoodie, jeans, and of all things blue hiking boots with white laces.  They had shoulder length wavy brown hair tucked behind their ears under a military style cap with a big letter ‘A’ embroidered on the front.  They seemed to be traveling light with just a small backpack but they were armed with a long, almost military looking, rifle spray-painted red and had some sort of rod hanging from their belt. They reached the doors, passed through, and walked right by me, whistling all the while.

“Um… hello?” They turned around, curiously at the sound of my voice.

“Oh, hello there, nice to meet you. Pleasant day isn’t it? Good for shopping. Have you found everything you were looking for? Did you get rice? It’s on isle eighteen I believe, you should get rice while you’re here.” Their voice and manner was so casual that it was off-putting given the situation.

“Errrrr… No. I haven’t gotten any rice; actually I just got here myself aside from a slight interruption. My name is Bob by the way.”

 “Bob… Bob, Bo-ob, BOB! What is in a name? Bob… To bob is to move up and down!” As they said ‘up and down’ they went up on their toes and then crouched down. I was starting to get the feeling that they were completely off their rocker. “You can call Atrox, Atrox! Everyone else does. Would you like to help Atrox with the present?”

“Err… sure?” I couldn’t think of anything else to say. At this point I felt it was fairly safe to assume that this Atrox character was mad. And everyone knows not to piss off a crazy person.

Atrox pointed over my shoulder and cheerfully said, “Is that Bob’s friend?”. I turned around right as the zombie I had encountered earlier lunged towards us. In a flash, with a practiced flick of the wrist, the rod that I had seen Atrox carrying was buried several inches deep into Ed’s skull. “Hmm… Guess he’s not your friend after all”, Atrox said as the zombie slumped to the floor. “Hehehe you found a berserker, it must be your lucky day”.

“Oh, jeeze! Let me catch my breath.”  I had been scared witless by the sight of my supposedly dead foe. “I hit it in the head earlier. It should’ve been dead! What the heck is that thing you're caring anyway?”. I pointed at the rod still in Atrox’s hand. It’s hard to imagine that something so small could be such an effective weapon.

“It’s my buster” Atrox said, head cocked to the side as if to say 'Duh'. “Zombie bone is still bone you know… You need to hit harder”

“Ok, but what is a buster?”. Atrox went on to explain, or rather, what I gained from Atrox’s explanation, was that the “buster” was actually the core from a bunker buster missile and because it was made of depleted uranium, it was in fact much heavier than lead and much stronger than steel. When Atrox handed it to me so that I could look at it, its weight took me by surprise and I almost toppled over.  It was about half a meter long and two centimeters in diameter with sports tape wrapped around one end for a handle and a small hook on the same end so that it could be hung from a belt and taken off quickly. The perfect weapon for close quarter zombie combat. I handed it back where it quickly found its place back on Atrox's belt. 

I followed Atrox around the store while the day’s business was attended to. Atrox went on to explain several things. That ‘berserkers’ were zombies that somehow managed to retain some of their mental prowess. They were faster, stronger, and smarter than your average zombie, even capable of stalking their victims in some cases. Atrox apparently came from a camp of survivors just outside the city and usually went on reconnaissance missions for the salvage team so that they would know what to expect when they went into one of the 'red zones', which apparently, we were currently in.  

I suddenly noticed that we had filled several carts as we talked. One was filled with a couple large bags of rice, canned goods, a bit of candy, and for some reason half a dozen or so jars of pickled herring. Of all the things in a store, who the hell gets pickled herring? The second cart was filled with ammunition, clothing, some general camping gear, and from the pharmacy, bottles of painkillers, antibiotics, some insulin, allergy medications and a large quantity of lithium. Atrox had already opened one of the bottles of lithium and gulped down a couple of pills, which explained quite a lot.

  The third cart was a bit more mysterious, rather confounding actually. It contained road flares, magnesium firestarters, four 300 foot extension cords, an empty paint can, duct tape, one of those empty 10-gallon water jugs you see in water dispensers at the doctor’s office, some copper wire, wire cutters, several boxes of instant cold packs, and a can of naptha.  We took two empty cans to the auto service station at the other end of the store and filled one with diesel and the other with petrol. I didn’t dare ask what for.

We returned to the carts and Atrox went busily to work, cutting the top off of the 10 gallon jug, filling the paint can with pellets from the instant cold packs and diesel fuel, placing a small jar inside the paint can, among the pellets, containing shavings from the magnesium firestarters mixed with the contents from the road flares. I watched as Atrox cut the end off of one of the extension cords, ran it through the lid of the paint can, placed a piece of copper wire between the exposed wires of the extension cord, placed the end within the small jar, and carefully replaced the lid on the paint can. I had a feeling I knew exactly what this was. “So Atrox… correct me if I’m wrong but this is a bomb isn’t it?”

“ A bomb? No, no no, it’s a present for our friends! You’ll see.”

 The last two words sent a shiver down my spine. It was a bomb and I knew it. The only question was, what in the world would be done with it. Atrox placed the paint can in the 10-gallon jug and we pushed the cart to the hardware section.

“Fill it with all the little pieces!” Atrox said. Atrox then proceeded to dump box after box of nails, bolts, nuts, and the like into the jug. I helped until it was nearly full. Then we pushed the cart to the toy section and filled the jug the rest the way up with glass marbles. Atrox insisted that we mix them up with the hardware as we went along.

We proceeded on our way to the parking lot, grabbing some twine and an alarm clock on the way. Atrox laid down extension cord on our way out into the parking lot, which was mostly empty aside from a few abandoned vehicles, and I helped hoist the jug out of the cart and onto the ground. Atrox then poured naptha around the hardware and reattached the cutoff top with duct tape. Finally Atrox wound up the alarm clock and set it for three hours time.

When we returned to the doors Atrox tied one end of the twine to the first extension cord, the other end to the role of tape, and threw it up onto the roof of the store. Atrox found a duffel bag and placed in it a portable stereo, a small petrol powered generator, and the can of petrol from earlier. I followed as Atrox led me to the roof access ladder and carried the duffel bag up and onto the roof.  At this point Atrox started smiling a huge grin.  We set up the generator near where the role of tape had landed and filled its reservoir, set the stereo on the edge of the building facing outward, and finally pulled the starting cord to the generator. As a roared to life I suddenly felt very nervous. All that noise… it will probably attract zombies all the way from the other side of town. Just as I thought it couldn’t get worse Atrox reached into the backpack and pulled out a CD. Placing it into the stereo Atrox turned the volume knob all the way up before pressing play.

 That tiny little box unleashed an unholy cacophony, the likes of which I had never heard before. I watched half in amusement and half in horror as Atrox stood there, hips swaying side to side, first pumping in the air, screamed out the lyrics.  “You can kill the protester! CAN’T KILL! You can’t kill the protest! You can murder the rebel! MURDER! You can’t murder the rebellion!”.

Two and a half hardcore punk filled hours went by and Atrox showed no signs of getting tired, or quieting down for that matter.  The whole time I just keep repeating to myself “Yup. I’m going to die today”. At first it was just one or two zombies showing up every couple of minutes or so but before long there were no fewer than a hundred mulling about outside the store. I could even hear a few from below who had gotten into the store but couldn’t quite manage to navigate the service ladder.  Then suddenly the music stopped. The silence startled me and I looked back to see that Atrox had unplugged the stereo and turned off the generator. Then I could hear it, the alarm clock in the parking lot, ringing. As I peered out over the ledge of the roof I could see the zombies moving away from the building and start gathering around the alarm clock.

A few minutes later it seemed the last stragglers from within the store had made it out into the parking lot, joining the group around the alarm clock. I looked at Atrox and said “There must be nearly 200 of them, so what now?”. Atrox just smiled at me, plugged the extension cord into the generator, motioned to get down, and pulled the starter cord once more.

KA-BOOM!!! The concussion seemed to shake the building. No, it didn’t seem to shake the building, it did shake the building. I looked up to see a gigantic fireball, slowly turning into a mushroom cloud, rising into the sky.

“Oooh! See! That’s the naptha. Without the naptha you don’t get all the flame”. Atrox  said gazing up into the sky, still grinning ear to ear.

 After that we decided it was time to leave.  We took the remaining two carts and left through the front doors. In the center of where the explosion had been there was nothing but scarred and burned blacktop. There were a few zombie carcasses 100 feet and further away from the center the blast but any closer than that it was just bits and pieces. I pushed my cart in the direction that Atrox had directed. As I look back towards the storefront I see that all of the windows are now missing and the front of the building is peppered with shrapnel, like a toothless ginger's freckles. I can’t quite decide what to make of my new companion. But one thing was certain. There were no zombies in sight... Moving ones anyway. Are all the other survivors in the camp this crazy?

  End of chapter 1

The prologue and Chapter 1 are told from the point of view of Robert(Bob for short). Bob is a bit of an otaku... Or at least he is based of of my impression of otakus from various sources. Bob is also a bit of a sourpuss...

The fictional Atrox is a bit off... Even by my standards! But like Mark Twain said, "Write about what you know." Atrox's obsession with pickled herring is something that will be brought up in later chapters(assuming there are later chapters) just in case you were wondering about that and is a characteristic based off of the non-fictional Atrox... XD

Someone told me that they felt that the making of the bomb part was a bit farfetched. So you know, the explosive that Atrox is making is infact called ANFO in real life and the magnesium and flares are serving as a detonator that is triggered by the copper wire heating up from the electrical current. When ammonium nitrate mixes with water it creates an endothermic reaction which is why it is used in many types of instant cold packs.

The song that Atrox sings the lyrics to is a real song. It is 'You Can the Protester, But You Can't Kill the Protest' by Anti-Flag.

Both the somewhat lackluster title and the use of 'they' or 'their' instead of s/he at the beginning is intentional. Aside from that please feel free to let me know about any grammatical or spelling errors. Honestly I am rather clueless towards the technical side of English.

Peace!
Atrox

*Zombies and Stuff was originally intended as a side story to *picklesmerf's H-how Could This Have Happened in an effort to help support her group, however the story has taken a rather wonky turn in my head and will be solely featuring OC's. This is only the first Zombies and Stuff chapter and there will probably be more depending on whether or not people would like it to continue.*
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