Like a Video Game

Wow I have never seen a 5' 2'' girl look so monstrous as Erin did when I told her my plan to go east and find my friends. See Erin grew up back east as well and moved out to Arizona because she absolutely hates the snow. So when I told her that I was going to go see if my friends back there were still alive she nearly exploded with anger. Once she was able to get out all the yelling and throwing of random stuff she reluctantly agreed to accompany me...thankfully.

I have done the trek across the country one time by myself and I couldn't ever imagine doing it alone again. Erin has made the trip quite a few times and knows the way by heart so that will make it a little easier on us. Since Erin basically is my GPS for this little adventure I agreed to let her drive. Little did I know what a pain in the ass decision that would turn out to be.

The first thing we decided was that we needed to find a running car that we could use to start our trip. The problem with that is that when the outbreak occurred many people were driving all over the country and millions of people crashed there perfectly good vehicles trying to avoid what they thought at the time were living people running through the streets. The other issue with this was that Erin insisted that the car had to be green. Here we are fighting to stay alive in a zombie infested world and Erin is still little Ms. Green...figures.

What to drive, what to drive. We figured the best thing to do was to find a dealership and just grab a new car that we knew wouldn't have any issues. Sounds easy right? Wrong!! Turns out lots of other people had the same idea but came unprepared and had been either mauled or turned into one of the creatures. SO now we are walking onto a parking lot filled with living dead and traversing what can only be described as a maze of cars trying to find a specific one, oh joy.

We traveled along until we found a VW dealership that didn't look like it had many of the creatures around it. I came up with plan to weed any of them out to help facilitate the process of locating our new car. I sat on the top of a crashed vehicle just outside of the lot with my .50 cal rifle a decided to pick of anything I saw moving. I swear I had flash backs of Halo as I popped off round after round into the creatures wandering in and out of the Beetles and the Jettas. I went through over 20 rounds hitting head shot after head shot to eliminate of possible foes. Damn if this had been a video game I would have gotten a medal or something. Blood and brains flew everywhere as the creatures dropped one by one. In the end the lot looked like something out of a horror movie. I guess that's kind of fitting since it feels like we are living in one.

Once the lot looked clear Erin and I moved in closer to start looking at the cars. I'm guessing what the people who attempted to do this before us didn't realize is that you cant just walk onto the lot grab a set of keys and expect to jump in any vehicle and drive off. I'm sure this lead to a lot of confusion for those people as they ran car to car trying to figure out which car they could start while trying to avoid the monstrosities wandering through the lots. Hell at one car we found a set of keys still in the door...with a hand still holding them, but no body to be found. Damn poor soul killed trying to escape. Lucky for me both Erin and I were smarter than that. We decided that one of us would stay in the lot and call out the vehicle numbers over the radio while the other searched for the keys inside. Of course I'm the one who headed into the building to search for the keys while Erin stayed outside in the lot that I had already cleared of creatures. Damn women I swear I'm to nice, next time she is going into the creepy building alone.

I figured I should probably go in prepared just in case there was a free stragglers left wandering around inside. I grabbed to desert eagle handguns and put them in my holsters. I strapped a 12-Gauge on my back and prepared myself for war. Little did I know at the time I wasn't the one who was going to need the mini armory I was carrying.

Once I got inside I let Erin know I was going to start searching for the key room and that she should start looking for the car she wants to take. After about 10 minutes of searching I located the keys in a small office no larger than a closet. There were hundreds of keys on the was so finding a specific one wasn't going to be as easy as I had hoped. I radioed Erin to let her know I had found them and to let me know what car she wanted. She started to call out groups of numbers relating to the vehicles in the lot. I searched up and down for each number, but had very little luck since there seemed to be no order to the organization of the keys on the wall. In between Erin's radio traffic I heard something coming from down the hall. I called out to Erin over the radio and told her to stop for a second I had to do a little investigating.

I poked my head out of the office and didn't see anything right off hand. I slowly stepped into the hallway and looked around. I felt like a kid crossing the road, "Look both ways before crossing!" I could hear my mom's voice in my head warning me. Who knew that her warning would still apply here at the end of the world as we knew it. I stopped in the middle of the hallway and listened again. The noises seemed to be coming from a cubicle about 15 feet from where I was standing. Something that we have learned about these creatures is that they respond very quickly to loud noises, so I got the genius idea to stomp my foot on the ground to try to get the attention of what ever was behind the wall. After my foot hit the ground I began to regret what I had done but alas it had already been done. I waited for a second and watched the wall. Nothing happened. So I stomped again, and again nothing. At this point I was confused and couldn't figure out what was making the noises. Slowly I walked towards the wall, gun drawn waiting for something to pop up. Still nothing. I reached the cubicle wall and crouched behind it. I double checked the two .50 hand guns to make sure the safety's were off. I jumped up with the guns out ready to start shooting. What I saw behind the wall nearly made me double over and start vomiting.

Laying next to her desk was what I have to assume was a female employee of the dealership gasping for air and bleeding out. Her neck looked like it had been torn apart by a buzz saw as it was shredded. She was on her last breaths and would not last much longer. I could barely stand to look and she stared at me waiting for her death. Knowing that she would come back to life once she died I pointed the gun at her head and pulled the trigger, putting a bullet through her brain. At least she wouldn't have to come back as one of these abominations.

As I sat thinking about what I just had to do Erin's voice came back over the radio. She had heard the gunshot and was frantic trying to make sure I was ok and still alive. Alive yes, ok no. That was one thing that had always bothered me since the outbreak had occurred. Not only had I become a killer of the undead, but now I had to kill people to save them from coming back as a rambling semblance of a human being that did nothing but kill. If I ever made it through all of this then I guess I may have some sins to atone for, but for now I did what was necessary for survival. I grabbed the radio to respond to Erin and let her know I was headed back to the key room and the building was clear.

It turns out that I had spoken to soon. As soon as I had let go of the mic button I turned to see a sprinter less than 5 feet away rushing towards me. Dammit he must have been the one that attacked the girl and I had drawn him to me when i fired the gun. The behemoth hit me like a ton of bricks. The sprinter had probably previously been a mechanic at the dealership. He was easily 6' 6'' and over 300 pounds. His mass hit me and sent me flying to the ground and skittering across the smooth floor. When I hit the ground the two guns in my hands shot out and went across the room. Great here I am with no weapons in hand with undead baby Huey standing a few feet away. I scrambled to my feet and began to run down the nearest hallway. I could hear his footsteps behind me as he gave chase. I ducked into a small office and shut the door. I dove over the desk and hit the ground behind it. No sooner did I hit the ground than I heard the door shatter and his mass hit it. Damn this guy was big and apparently he saw me as dinner. I was crouching behind the desk hiding and hoping that he would think I had disappeared.

He sat in the doorway scanning the room trying to figure out where I had gone. See the thing about these creatures is that they are not really all that intelligent. It doesn't matter how smart one may have been they had been when they were alive, once they were turned their only thought is to hunt and kill. Luckily for me this guy probably hadn't been all that smart in life and now he was even dumber in death. I watched from under the desk as he slowly turned and started to walk away. I remembered I had the shotgun strapped to my back. I grabbed the strap and pulled it around until I had my hands on the trigger. As the creature turned to exit the room having lost his prey and jumped out from behind the desk and fired off a round. The shot hit the creatures mass and sent him reeling forward. Bad shot on my part as the creature turned around and lunged for me. I swung the point of the shotgun up and blasted another round into the creature. This one hit the mark as half of his face blew off in a cloud of blood and bone. The lumbering giant fell backwards and twitched. The shot hadn't completely killed monster but had incapacitated him enough that I could go over and finish him off. I stepped up to his body, stood over him and pointed the gun at what was left of his head. I cocked the gun and pulled the trigger. The pieces of his head that were left flew apart if a millisecond and ended what must have been a miserable existence for this guy.

I was sweating bullets and wondering how I had been so lucky to have survived that little surprise attack when i again heard Erin's voice over the radio. Only this time it was not Erin's meek little voice asking if I was ok, but her screaming at the top of her lungs. I hauled ass out of the office, ran back out to the lobby grabbed my handguns and made haste to the lot.

I had been careless with firing off all of those rounds and it had attracted the attention of a wandering pack of sprinters that were nearby. Dammit why had I agreed to let Erin stay out there alone. We should have never split up. I burst through the glass doors and screamed for Erin to start running towards me. She ran as fast as she could towards the doors while I tried my best to cover her. I hit 2 of the creatures in the face with .50 cal rounds while doing my best to avoid Erin. I slammed the doors shut and did my best to hold them once Erin had dove through.

As I held the doors as tight as possible Erin grabbed the shot gun from my back. I yelled for Erin to run into a cubicle for cover. She ducked behind a small wall while I let go of the doors and ran as fast as I possibly could. My body was still sore from the mass of undead that had plowed into me earlier so I wasn't able to move at full speed. I ducked behind another wall a few feet from Erin. I heard the creatures rushing in trying to hunt us down for dinner.

The four creatures that had burst through the doors were running through the lobby smashing into everything in their way. I figured it would be able to take down a few and draw them away from Erin by making a loud noise. I grabbed the computer monitor on the desk next to me and heaved it over the wall. Without knowing it I had hit one of the creatures in the face and had done nothing but piss it off more. The creatures head popped over the wall and began snarling at me. Since I wasn't expected this I jumped backwards and fired off a single round. The shot blew through the creatures eye splattering pieces of brain and flesh across the lobby.

No sooner did I see the creatures head explode than I heard Erin's shotgun go off and see a spray of blood come from the wall near her cubicle. Damn I had taught her well she was handling herself like a pro zombie killer right now. With two down that only left us with two to still drop. I peeked out from around the corner and saw the remaining two running towards Erin. Damn my mind was racing, I had to do something to stop them from getting to her. I ran out from behind the wall and did my best linebacker impression as I drove my shoulder into the nearest creature. The force knocked the both of us down to the floor. As I hit the ground I saw Erin running out from behind the wall with her shotgun ready and she started firing at the one that was still standing. She hit it with three rounds before it finally fell. She turned her attention to the one I had knocked over and pulled the trigger, but heard nothing but a echoing click. She was out of rounds and standing in the wide open. I scrambled to my feet and yelled for Erin to get out of the way. I unloaded everything I had into the creature as it slowly got to its feet. In my haste I had missed its head with every round. As it rose slowly and started to move towards us I noticed that the monitor I had thrown at them earlier was now only a few feet from me. I ran towards the monitor and grabbed it from the ground. With everything I had left a sprinted towards the now standing creature and smashed it in the head with the screen. With a dull thud the creature collapsed to the ground and stopped moving.

Exhausted Erin and I both sat in the nearest chairs in the lobby and looked at the carnage that had ensued. We had managed to kill 7 of the undead between the two of us and had come out alive. I'm not sure how long our luck can hold out before one of us gets injured in one of these fights. but for now we were alive and safe and that's what mattered.

After getting some rest and raiding what food was left in the building Erin and I decided on a car from the lot. I guess a 2010 Golf TDI isn't the worst way to travel across country after the apocalypse, at least we'll get good gas mileage.