Timothy Long - Z-Risen - Outbreak

“Wait for me!” I yelled and leapt.

I missed.

The first Z came at me so I clothes-lined the asshole. A shot and something buzzed past my neck. I looked over my shoulder and there was Joel Kelly, holding onto the back of a giant machine gun while he somehow pulled his side arm and shot a dead fuck through the head.

This guy should be in a video game.

I hauled ass, jumped for the back and started to slide back off. Joel dropped his gun, grabbed the machine gun mount with both hands and stuck his boot right next to my face. I grabbed hold and tried to haul myself up but a Z got my leg.

I kicked back a few times and got him in the face. Bone crunched as his nose was crushed but I didn’t have time to gloat because the truck lurched into motion and I had to hold onto Joel Kelly’s leg for dear life.

I crawled up the back of the HUMVEE until I was able to reach the gunner. Him and Joel reached out and pulled me the rest of the way then I was clutching the back of the gun mount.

“Haul ass!” The gunner pounded the top of the truck.

We broke across a parking lot, ran over a tent, hit the side of the building and that almost knocked me clear but I had a death grip.

Then we were past the little base and behind the line of trucks.

“Next stop, L A.” The gunner grinned.

“Great. I need some new underwear,” I said over the roaring wind.

The gunner smiled again and patted my shoulder. He ducked back into the vehicle for a minute.

“Joel, man. I owe you.”

“Yeah you do. Dumb squid.”

“Words hurt,” I said. “Especially from a dumb jarhead.”

“Don’t get all mushy on me. Christ. I’ve had enough of this day and if you start bawling I’m going to have the gunner shoot me in the fucking head.”

“Okay man, I won’t, but I want to tell you something.”

“I ain’t marrying you.”

“Thank the fuck Christ.” We hit a bump and I came down on my sore chest again. After an epic swearing session I got my breath back.

“Gonna make it?”

“As long as you got my back I think I’ll be okay. You’re like a brother, Joel. Nah. You are my brother.” I said it and meant it. We’d seen a lot of shit over the last few weeks but one thing hadn’t changed. One thing had been there to help me survive and cope with this new world and that was Marine Sergeant Joel “Cruze” Kelly.

“Know something?” Joel asked.

We bounced up the road, slowed at a cross street, and then maneuvered around a wreck.

“Huh?” I asked, expecting some kind of brotherhood of war speech.

“I’m glad we’re moving. I just farted and it’s a reeker. Sorry about that.” He looked at me with a smirk. “Brother.”

I couldn’t help it. I laughed until tears streamed down my face.

“Can you guys drive faster? Something died back here!” I roared at the driver.

“Sure, man.” The driver called back.

“I can’t hang on that long.”

“Hitchhikers take what they can get.” He laughed from inside.

“I hope he’s kidding.” I said to the gunner.

He didn’t answer, just looked up.

Overhead, a helicopter roared away from the base and headed north. If Lee was on it I wished him well, because when I found him again he’d answer questions with my size fourteen boot up his ass.

This is Machinist Mate First Class Jackson Creed and I am still alive.

When the dead rise, Ex-Special Forces soldier Erik Tragger flees to the mountains to wait out the end of the world. Cut off from civilization for months, he returns to find cities ruined and ruled by the walking dead.

Tragger reluctantly joins a group of survivors with a plan: flee to Portland where humanity is carving out a stronghold. But along the way they face opposition at every turn—the dead, rogue military forces, looters… and a new enemy more dangerous than any they have yet encountered.

Among the stumbling, mindless zombies walk the ghouls. The ghouls are living dead creatures that not only strategize and plan, but also possess the ability to guide their shambling brothers.

With weapons and supplies dwindling, Erik and his companions will faceoff against millions of the dead who have but one goal: complete eradication of the last of the living.

I had been watching the news compulsively for three or four days before it happened. I watched the stupid television so much that it put me off shopping until it was almost too late.

It was the weekend, and I called in sick on Friday so I could stay home and follow the developing madness on the TV. The media made a point of saying that people weren’t going to work. I was one of them, content to be somewhere safe while civilization fell apart.

I was low on goods, like fresh meat and vegetables. The bottom drawer in my freezer was filled with crumbs from some chicken crap that spilled out a few months ago. Smelled too. That freezer burn reek that never really goes away no matter how many times you clean the damn thing.

I dug out a half pound of ground chuck and tossed it in the microwave to defrost. Half an hour later, I remembered it was done, and formed a half-ass hamburger out of the meat and fried it in butter. An egg and ketchup went on top. Bon appetite. Enjoy the food, because it may be your last meal, was my only thought as I ate like an automaton.

I could have become a survival nut—boarded up the place, set up guns by each window on the second floor. That way, if one of those things, or my ex-wife’s boyfriend, showed up, I could blow their heads off. That would be a fine sight. Allison returns to beg for help from her former military husband, and I start taking pot shots at them. Maybe I could grow a long scraggly beard and run around in my underwear, shouting about the end of the world. Now that would be a funny sight. Sure to keep the scavengers away for a few days.

I’ll never forget the day she left. She took her shit and left a big hole in my chest where my heart used to be. “Erik,” she tried to reason, “it’s not you. There is something wrong with me. Something that all the counseling in the world can’t fix.”

In the end, I tossed her bags on the sidewalk, took her keys, and removed the one that opened the deadbolts on the house. Then I threw them in front of the car.

Her new guy just sat there like a lump. He had on sunglasses and refused to look at me, no matter how long I stared. She had to load her stuff in the back of his beat-up Volvo, and then he puttered away from my now-lonely house on a stream of exhaust.

I crouched a few feet from the little, flat-panel TV I picked up at one of those Christmas sales and chewed the food, barely tasting the lump of greasy meat. I’m sure it was great, but I didn’t taste a single bite.

CNN had a live crew in Portland, and they were following a pair of the dead things around like paparazzi. It was silly, yet I couldn’t look away from the TV. I should have changed the channel to see if there were some better coverage of the event, but I let it roll as a pretty reporter in high heels followed the dead things, with her cameraman close behind. In the distance, a pair of camouflaged trucks rolled by, filled with men who had large guns in hand. It was so reassuring to see them on the scene that I almost cheered, like my team was winning a sporting event.