Episode 5: Zach’s Journey

"Hello?" Zach screamed into the phone. He didn’t mean to really scream, he just meant to sound angry. But he had woken up seconds ago, and was unconsciously obliged to scream.

"Zach? I need you to do something, right now!"

"Todd?"

"Zach, there’s big trouble. Zombies."

"What?"

"Zombies, Zach, Zombies!"

"Thellyoutalkinbout?" He slurred.

"Zach, Zach, listen carefully."

"Shit, you woke me up man!"

"Yes, I know, but you’ll want to be awake. Go get a weapon, and get to Dawn’s house. Protect her."

"It’s… shit, it’s midnight! What the hell do you want me to go to Dawn’s house for?"
"Zombies!"

Finally, this registered with Zach.

"Zombies?"

"Yes, Zombies. They’re everywhere out here, and, according to the radio, they’re everywhere out there too."

("What? Yeah, we’ll follow." A woman’s voice said. "Just go! Go!")

"Who the hell is that?" Zach asked.

"That’s…"

("What’s your name by the way?" Zach heard Todd ask. "Jennifer!" The woman’s voice yelled.)

"That’s J…"

"Jennifer, yeah, I heard. Who the hell is she?"

"I can’t explain now. Just get a weapon, get to Dawn’s house, and protect you and her."

"From the zombies?"

"Yeah. You know how to take out zombies, right?"

"’Course I do man! You think Imma dumbass? Cut off the brain from the body!"

"Good. Now, be safe. Get a good weapon."

"No problem."

"Click."

"Click you too," Zach grumbled, hanging the phone back up. Zombies? That’s a new one. He stumbled over to the window and looked out.

Sure enough, he saw shambling corpses shambling down the road. Some of them were trying to get in houses. He laughed his "Oh Shit!" Laugh when he saw they couldn’t open doors at all. He took another look out. Yep, definitely zombies.

He grinned to himself; finally, he was gonna get some action. And Todd was condoning it, too!

Zach had a very strange loyalty to the friends he had; he consistently listened to their advice and would nearly always consider doing just as they said. Zach was his own man, though, and so only did it if it fit with him. Few people could put up with his strange loyal independence, but that was okay with him, as he could put up with few people. Those two groups almost always were the same, except in the case of that bitch Becky, who could put up with anyone.

Zach went upstairs, to the family’s store room, to the eastern wall. He touched it gingerly, pressed lightly, moved a bit over, pressed lightly again, and slammed his fist through the wall. He grabbed the side of the hole, and peeled back the wall.

There, inside the wall, right at his arm level, was a sort of pedestal. Sitting on it was a gently curved sheath, painted red, and a blue, silkened hilt. Zach reached in and took the hilt and sheath, pulling it towards him. He looked at it for a moment, and removed the sheath.

It was a beautiful blade. It had not been used since its last polishing, and still shone brightly. The metal was the most highly processed steel built into a sword in the last half century.

Zach had found it on his door step one morning, three years ago, in a brown paper box. There was no indication of who had left it there, but it was clearly marked, in a magenta ink, ZACH. He had warily torn it open, finding the blade there. He had kept its existence a guarded secret from his parents, and had had it polished once a year. Each time he had it polished, he had to find a new place to hide it; the last time, he had built an alcove into the wall of the family storage room. That was only five months ago.

And now it would finally be used.

Zach grinned with horrible malice, hoping that that awful Becky had been zombified, and would be in his way. Sadly for him, Becky had escaped the… But that’s a tale for another episode.

He took the stairs three at a time on the way back down. He wrenched a piece of paper from under his computer and scrawled on it, in a green gel pen, "Gone to kill zombies. Never be home. Survive if you want. -Zach".

He fixed the katana-which he had dubbed Twin Scarlet River(He was very self-absorbed, and was ready to make blood flow)-to his belt, made sure he had his wallet, pocketed his shades, tossed on his backpack with only a blank notebook in it, and put on his shoes.

He burst out the door, running at an incredible speed, matched generally only by fictional characters. Some zombies moved towards him, but he was too fast; they turned and tried to pursue him, but they were too slow. He was three blocks away by the time any of them had managed to turn around all the way.

After about ten minutes he began to run out of breath; so he slowed down. He checked his surroundings quickly; he was already about half-way there. But most of the area he had passed through so far was undeveloped area; not many people lived there. And he had been moving away from graveyards.

He happened to know that Dawn lived around the center of a densely populated neighborhood, where, interestingly and mysteriously, cell phone reception was weak. That neighborhood was only two blocks from a graveyard. And that graveyard was not even remotely near any other densely populated areas. So the flesh-eaters would swarm that way immediately.

He grinned. It would just be that much more fun.

He continued the journey just walking. It was uneventful here; he already knew that the flesh-eaters would only want to be where, well, there was flesh. He stopped once to take a couple swipes at the air with the blade; it cut cleanly through, leaving barely a noise and stirring the air much less than he expected. The backpack obviously wasn’t encumbering him. Then he approached the outskirts of Dawn’s neighborhood. He hesitated across the street from the shopping center there. Swarming around it were hundreds of zombies, wandering around, clumsily pushing carts, bumping into cars, trying to pump gasoline into the air. Zach couldn’t decide if it was funny or sad. Then he remembered how much humanity sucked, and decided it was funny. He looked both ways, realized that there would probably never be anymore cars coming, and broke back into a run.

About then, a couple of the closer zombies noticed him. He stopped when he reached the sidewalk and unsheathed the weapon at his side. They came at him, but were very slow; he leapt over the bushes barrier, and ran at them. A few feet away, he slowed a bit, and was suddenly flying through the air at them. With a sadistic grin, he tore his katana through the neck of the one on his right. He stopped himself by landing, spun around, and drove the blade straight into the head of the other. As he pulled it out, both fell. He gave the detached head a kick into the crowd, and it flew, like a soccer ball turned into an eagle. It hit a few zombies, and they and a few others began to turn towards him. Pretty soon, the entire army had dropped their gas nozzles, let go of their shopping carts, and turned towards him.

"Oh, shit!" he screamed gleefully. And they flooded towards him with maximum speed-which wasn’t all that fast, but still quite intimidating when an army of corpses has achieved it. He began to run. At them, not away. He rose his katana as he screamed: "Ohshitohshitohshit!"

He reached the edge of the not-so-much-swelling-as-stumbling army and began to tear his blade into them. He beheaded two, cut one in half horizontally, cut one in half vertically, and began to just swing his sword wildly. All the while screaming "OhshitohshitohshitohSHIT!!"

After a few minutes, one of them managed to grab his arm. He spun in its grip and stabbed it, right in the left eye. He spun back around and jammed the blade into the heart area of the one coming up behind him. He pulled the sword up, splitting it like a human shaped pac-man. He still screamed "OHSHITOHSHITOHSHITOHSHIT!!"

He gradually cleaved a path through the crowd. He dashed, full speed, out the other end, and ran into the S-Mart grocery store. Compared to outside, it was relatively free of zombies, so he momentarily slowed down to a nice gait. And then he remembered that the ones outside would have noticed that they weren’t eating. He picked up the pace again.

He swung quickly around a corner; as he did, he took off the head of a flesh-eater which had barely noticed him. He ran down the front of the store. He stopped at a soda stand, and rapidly tossed a few Cokes into his backpack. Need caffeine to survive an onslaught like this. He spun around, took off another head, and ran. He went down an aisle, took a turn, ran up the side aisle, went back the other way, turned again, and put two boxes of snack-cakes in his backpack. He turned again, ran some more, and hit just the section he needed.

There, in front of him, was a glorious locked glass case, full of guns and ammunition. After ripping apart the heads of the two zombies hobbling around the section, he wiped the gore off of his sword with a shirt pulled from the adjoining wall, and sheathed it. He tossed the shirt back into the clothes section, and approached the glass.

He examined it carefully, and began to look for something to smash it open with. Then he noticed that just down the way, someone had already done it with a tire-iron. All the guns were gone from that display case-doubtless scattered about the wandering and non-wandering corpses outside. He noticed a couple corpses with bullet wounds in their heads. He took the tire iron from the case, and smashed open the remaining case. He tossed two pistols into the second pocket of his backpack, along with two boxes of ammo. He took two more and, after loading them, pocketed them. He then grabbed the marvelous, double barrel shotgun, and two cases of shells. He flipped the safety off, loaded each barrel, and tossed the cases into his backpack. He then shoved the shotgun-barrel first-into his backpack and zipped it up as far as it would go. The hilt and a good portion of the barrel still hung out. He ripped it back out in frustration, and fired it into the head of an approaching beast; the head was gone, and, once he cocked it, so was the shell.

He looked around the area; he needed something to saw off the end of the shotgun, so he could carry it. Nothing he could see; so he moved to gardening tools.

Sure enough, he found a nice chain-saw there. He tried to turn it on, but it wasn’t gassed up. He remembered there being a gas station outside the store. He thought about it for a moment. Should he go fuel up the chainsaw just to have an extra, very strong weapon? Then he had another thought. He looked carefully at the chainsaw. Then he looked carefully at his left hand. Then he looked carefully at the chainsaw again. He nodded to himself, and dropped the chainsaw, and the shotgun, reached back into his backpack, and dumped out the shells. He ran back to the case, grabbed another pistol and two more boxes of slugs for his backpack, and went to the back of the store. He wandered a bit, until he found the door to the back room. It was unlocked.

He ran through, right past the few zombies who had found their way, or been made, back here, to the loading docks. One of them was open, and there were no trucks around. Apparently someone had already escaped this way. He leapt down to the ground. It was devoid of zombies back here, so he crouched down and removed his backpack. He pulled the box of Twinkies out of his pack, and one of the bottles of Coke. He ripped open the box and, spilling the rest back into the pack, took one set. He ripped it open and, with the rapture of one of the beasts tearing into the flesh of a still warm body, devoured both. He spun open the cap to the bottle, and chugged it all without breathing. He tossed the bottle and the empty wrapper into some bushes, and, putting his backpack back on, shot up and forward.

The park, which had been torn out to be developed into even more houses, had quite a number of the beasts in it. He took one of the pistols out of his pocket, and fired at one about ten yards from him. He missed badly, and it turned and ambled at him. Taking careful aim this time, he fired again at seven yards, and managed to hit its chest. It was pushed back a centimeter or two, but didn’t stop moving. He growled and, taking very, very careful aim, fired again at two yards. He managed to nick its ear, but it still kept coming. Disregarding aim, he unloaded the final three shots into it. They all failed to connect fatally; Zach, grumbling in extreme displeasure, re-pocketed the pistol. He unsheathed the sword and quickly finished the bullet-riddled monster.

He charged across the construction site with a vigor he hadn’t matched since he first left his house; soon, he was into the already-built-houses area, without further incident. There, he was surprised to find that the zombie population was relatively low; he only saw two or three hobbling around the streets; he quickly put all of them out of their miseries.

He finally reached Dawn’s house; when he was very close to the yard, he noticed that there was a zombie stumbling up walk. He ran up to it, and, about to slice down on it, it turned around.

"Zach?" it asked, bewildered. He began the downward swing, but stopped right above the top of Marty’s head.

"What the hell’re you doing?" She screamed at him, stumbling backwards.

"Sorry," He said. "Thought you were one of them."

"One of who?" she slurred. (Oh, she’s drunk. That’s why she moves like them, Zach thought.)

"The zombies! Get inside!" he screamed. She stood up and, as he re-sheathed his sword again, stumbled up to the door and opened it.

He pushed her in with great urgency, and was immediately behind her. He slammed the door shut and locked it for the first time in years.

"Go make sure that your parents are here!" he commanded. "And alive!"

"What? Oh, okay. Zach, are you drunk?"

"No! And neither are those things out there!"

"Things?"

"The zombies!"

"Wait, there’re zombies out there?"

"YES!" he screamed, with a mixture of glee and panic.

"Oh, I thought they were all just drunk from 4th of July."

Zach closed his eyes in frustration. "Do you remember what I told you to do a minute ago?"

Marty hesitated. "Did it involve whiskey?"

"No! It did not! It involved the not-drunk things out there!"

"Oh. Are you drunk?"

Zach’s hand wandered towards his sword.

"Oh! I remember now. You told me to go wake up mom and dad. Okay, I’ll do that. One of them should drive you home if you’re drunk."

He twitched, but relaxed his hand, and ran downstairs to Dawn’s room.

He smashed open the door with impressive force.

"Dawn! Wake up! Zombies!"




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