ZOMBIE BOOKS

Turnbull Refuge.  As I did so, I mostly kept to the outskirts of town, where I could see zombies coming from a distance, and there were plenty of trees to hide in.
This was before I knew that zombies couldn’t see well.  This was before I knew that a horde hunted by smell, and that they could track a person from over a mile away.
While approaching Badger Lake Road, I heard a truck coming from town and accelerating wildly.  It flew past me in a blur, weaving all over the road and squealing its tires in the corners.  Just out of eyeshot, the truck left the road and found a tree.  The sound of the truck wrapping itself around that trunk was tremendous.  I raced over to see what had happened, and found the truck easily.  The driver was conscious, but clearly delirious.  When I asked if I could help, he just looked and me and said in a distant voice, “It’s in my head.”  When I asked what he thought was in his head, the driver pulled a gun from the door and repeated, “It’s in my head.  I can feel it.”  He then stuffed the barrel between his teeth and squeezed the trigger.  The bullet went clean through his head and out the back window of the pickup.  My feelings of mortification lasted for only a moment, before the sound of gunshots in the city brought me back.  I searched his truck and took any supplies I could find.  He had some food, but not much.  I took his pistol and the box of ammo on the floorboard.  I grabbed and shouldered his backpack without looking inside.  I couldn’t stand to look into the hole he had made in his own head, so when I left I said thank you to his chest.  I’ll never forget how the blood blended with the colors of his EWU sweatshirt.  Shaking my thoughts clear, I hustled back to my course.  Turnbull was a long way off on foot and the area was becoming more dangerous by the minute.  I knew that if I stayed parallel to the road I would walk right into the heart of Turnbull and hopefully not be spotted.
The cracks of gunfire were increasing in regularity behind me.  Little did I know that while I was trying to get away from the city, the residents were winning the fight against the invading horde.  A few clever rednecks had discovered that if you shoot out the legs of the zombies, you could pretty much walk right up and destroy one with a sledge or an axe.  Posses were formed and dispatched to hunt down the invaders.  Word spread quickly, and the residents of Cheney began to feel like this was a battle they could win.  But there was a factor that most did not take into consideration.
Some of the infected had made it past Cheney and landed directly in Spokane.  The two hundred thousand residents of Spokane were now under attack.  I can’t speak for what the city looked like just before the first wave hit, but I know what the result was.  Spokane fell in a day.  One zombie made four, and those four made fifteen, and those fifteen made a hundred, and so on and so on until the entire population was either dead or had fled.  Thousands upon thousands of shufflers came pouring out of the wasted city and into the countryside.  Soon, the whole east side of the state would be littered with the walking dead.
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Steven kept his family on the back roads and away from the prying eyes of the town.  Four Lakes wasn’t a big town by any standard, but there had been a frightening number of reports coming in about entire families being killed and robbed for supplies.  With all of the stores having been bought out and then looted, people were turning from simple theft to violent crime in an effort to obtain the supplies they needed.  No one knew how long this would last, so every crumb counted.  Knowing that people would resort to disgusting measures, Steven had kept his movements subtle, never letting on what he was doing or allowing anyone see what his supply store looked like.  His ultimate goal was to go completely unnoticed.  Driving a crew cab diesel truck and pulling a 5th wheel trailer made that goal difficult to achieve, but he managed to get his family out of town without incident and have them on their way south to the hills and hunting grounds outside the cities.
Amy sat in the truck cab behind her mother so she could watch her father.  His features had always seemed strong and comforting to the girl.  Like a cartoon hero her father’s jawline was exaggerated and his broad chin had a discreet dimple at the tip.  His nose was large but not protruding, and his forehead was constantly wrinkled with thought.  The man’s thinning hair was short, neat, and only lightly dusted with grey at the temples.  To his fellow man, Steven was the picture of leadership and guidance; the kind of man guys would follow into certain death.  To Amy, her father had reach deity level.  If there was any man on the planet that could keep them alive, it was her father.
As that first day wore on, Steven kept the nose of his truck pointed south and was determined to continue driving until he stopped seeing cars.  Despite his hopes, the further he drove from the city, the more cars they encountered.  Cars would zoom by them at incredible speeds and disappear around corners, all traveling away from Spokane.  They watched a truck with a slide-in camper dive into a corner too fast and tip over into the bushes, crashing onto its side and leaving a wide rut in its path.  Before they got to the scene, the car in front of them had pulled-up, stopped, and were breaking the camper open.  They were ignoring the passengers