Mark Clodi - Outbreak

It was a day later that Nancy and the girls left from the house in suburbia and it had been two days since Nancy had gone from head of marketing to her new profession, queen of the dead. In that time the area south of Denver known as the Tech Center had gone from an area packed with office buildings housing accountants, stock brokers, engineers, and health care companies, to a city in chaos. Abandoned cars packed the streets like fallen dominoes. Smoke filled the air and trash freely tumbled along, pushed by the wind.

In just a few short days the number of dead walking the streets had increased exponentially. At first Nancy had her gang of girls destroy each and every zombie that came across their path. It soon became evident that they were fighting a losing battle. It not only drained the girls of their energy, but for every zombie that fell another five stepped up to take it's place. Their appetites were still being sated however they had cut back on killing everyone they came across. As they fed more it felt like they needed to eat less and could go longer between eating, as if they were getting permanently 'full'.

Nancy’s original plan had been to march right back to MAC Co, find Fred and that fucker Jimbo and let the girls chop them into little pieces. However, Nancy was worried about Jimbo, he had taken off on his own and he was probably out there eating as many as he could to get stronger too. The question was what would happen when they met? A fight was probably a good bet, however finding the fucker was going to take some time and effort. In the end she decided to put finding Fred and Jimbo, on her ‘B’ list of priorities, she would probably never find them. Now her plan was to take the girls out and establish an empire, if she still could; finding prey was becoming harder and harder. Nancy gave the girls orders to not to permanently kill the next three girls they each took, thereby increasing her gang size to twelve, plus her, for thirteen. After that she might let each girl make two more zombies, when she had fifty or so she was going to wield some real power. As for the lessening food supply, well there were still many parts of suburbia that were unexplored.

The hot July days caused everything to radiate heat, the pavement, the abandoned vehicles, the office buildings, everything was a blur of red, orange, and yellow. The burning sun also expedited the aging of their dead skin. For these reasons Nancy had opted to rest, not that the dead needed rest, during the day and hunt under the cool blanket of night.

Earlier that day they had been resting at what used to be a night club called 'Cool Water'. It's lack of windows and overall dark and cool motif made it a perfect place to lay low and wait for nightfall. During the day Nancy had heard sporadic gun shots from the north. As soon as the sun set behind the Rocky Mountains she sent Veronica and Julie to scout it out. It was not long before the two returned with good and bad news. Half a mile from the night club three men were occupying a Conoco gas station. The bad news being they were armed with rifles and hand guns. These were weapons Nancy would really like to have, adding firearms to her super human strength was a very good plan, so the gang set out towards the gunfire.

Even before they reached the gas station they could see bright flood lights and hear gun fire. The Conoco was located at a corner of a small strip mall. The gas station was comprised of one small building in the middle flanked on either side by fours sets of gas pumps. The red and white Conoco signs lit up the evening sky. The windows and doors of the gas station were boarded up and the only movement that could be seen was on it's flat roof. A parking lot filled with rambling zombies separated the gas station from the rest of the buildings.

‘Such a waste.’ thought Nancy, ‘Someone needs to make zombies stop making zombies or we are going to run into a serious food shortage.’

Nancy and her gang hid in the shadows and watched for a little while as the people, men, Nancy thought, shot the zombies milling about in the parking lot and empty streets. Veronica’s report had been accurate. There were three men atop the gas station laughing and drinking beer as if they were on a camping trip in the mountains. She watched as a zombie stumbled into the parking lot attracted to the energy the men gave off like a moth to a flame.

Nancy gave the girls orders to back her up if she looked like she needed help, emphasizing her commands with a mental nudge as well, then she crept into hearing range. Surprisingly this was farther out than Nancy would have thought, so her hearing was improving too? Or the men were just loud braggarts…

“Hey Jake, who’s turn is it?”

“Um, I think George’s.”

“Bullshit, he got the last one, the fat nurse bitch.”

“Come on Tony, you’ve got him by over a hundred fucking points” Jake insisted.

“I still say it’s bullshit, fucking bullshit. You had better start writing this shit down.” Tony shot back and took a long swig of beer which ended with him tossing the empty can over the edge of the roof.

“Hey maaaan, don’t get your panties in a ruffle. You’ll get your turn.” George said. He moved over to the edge of the roof and took aim on the approaching zombie with his hunting rifle. When he had finally lined up the shot he paused for a long moment as though something was bothering him. The bullet sailed over the left shoulder of the zombie.

“Shit!”

“Minus five points dick hole. My turn.” Tony insisted.

“Naaa man, I get one more shot, that’s the rules baby, you got to O-bide by the rules man. Not to worry, I think smoke got in my eye.” George said removing hand rolled cigarette from his mouth which he flicked over the edge of the roof.

“I’ll stick something in your eye.” Tony mumbled.

“You would too. Fucker.” George’s second shot was true and split the zombies head in two. “Give me fifteen big ones Jake.”

“Ten asshole, your first one missed.” Jake corrected.

“Fuuuck, what ever man. What-eva.” George grabbed a beer, returned to his lawn chair and started rolling another cigarette.

The men had several hunting rifles and hand guns. When they weren’t shooting zombies they argued, drank beer and talked about bitches. Nancy watched five more zombies get disposed of in the same manner as the first. She was formulating a plan on how to get the men down from their secure perch when Veronica touched her shoulder.

Veronica sneaked up to Nancy and pointed across the parking lot, “Look” she whispered. There was a dark figure leaning against a car. “He’s been there since we arrived.” Even with the bright energy of the gas station illuminating the parking lot Nancy could see that this man was void of energy. Other zombies looked dull and almost blue black in color, the living were a swirling pattern of bright energy that were easy to spot. 'Another stupid zombie, great. Or rather maybe a more intelligent one, if he were not in the streets milling about he probably was a second tier zombie already.' thought Nancy.

“Yeah, thanks V, now if you don’t mind we’ve got work to do.” Another shot rang out and another zombie fell to the ground, fifteen points for Jake.

Nancy decided to wait until it was once again George’s turn before she moved from her hiding place. She straightened her dress and started towards the gas station.

Nancy was surprised at how close she got to the men before Jake took notice of her. She could hear them arguing over “who had fucked the fattest chick.”

“Shit George, your turn and you only get five points because she’s so damn close that even your mah-ther could nail her.”

“Who nailed George’s mom?” Tony joked.