ZOMBIE BOOKS

reason people are behaving like animals.  They are the reason my family is gone; my home is gone; my life is gone.
Something has to be done.
The zombies may not have chosen their fate of infection, but they’re the ones that are infecting the rest of the living world.  If all the zombies were dead and gone, then people could begin to recover and life could start to go back to the way it was.  Mothers and fathers and siblings and grandparents, they could all start building their families again.  The world would never be the same, but it would be better than the wasteland it is becoming.
Something has to be done.
No one is saying that one man could wipe out the zombie threat, but if everyone helped…  If everyone stepped in and stood together against the undead, we could recapture the world from them.  If people across the country did their part to eliminate the zombies in their area, we could win this country for the living if everyone helped.
Something has to be done.
And so I made a goal: The eradication of zombies in Cheney.  I would work to kill as many of the shufflers as I could find.  I figured that there had to be others out there who felt like I did, and if enough of us took action, then we could take this world back.  I didn’t have any dreams of single-handedly eradicating zombies across the globe, but I knew I had to do something, and my hometown was as good a place to start as any.
So my first step was to find a residence.  If people were suspicious and dangerous before there were any zombies in Washington, they had become erratic and homicidal since the horde landed.  Across the area, if you were too close to someone’s house and you moved, prepare to be shot at.  Living or dead, the residents of Cheney lived in dread of the unknown.
What if that’s a zombie?
What if it bites me?
What if I become a zombie?
Is it coming this way?
Shoot it, Carl!  Shoot it!
There was no noble effort to band together and hunt down the undead threat.  People preferred to board themselves up and hide.  Almost overnight, the majority of the human population gave up their seat as top of the food chain to a band of infected undead.  Some got brave, but most just hid.
While I had no intentions of staying in hiding, I did understand the need for a safe place to sleep.  So the search began for a headquarters.  My first thought was an abandoned house, but that proved to be too dangerous a maneuver at this time.  It was impossible to tell if anyone was using a house.  Even homes with broken windows and smashed-in doors sometimes still housed breathers, and breathers love their guns.  Just walking the street I took too long looking at a home that by all appearances was completely forsaken, and the residents fired a few shots my way.  I threw my hands up and swore that I wasn’t a zombie.  They either didn’t believe me or didn’t care.  I was ordered to leave, or be killed where I stood.
So homes were a bad choice.  I then went to the industrial district, looking for a building that was hard to access, sturdy, but could give me shelter.
More breathers.  More warnings.
Down by the tracks I found an enclosed railcar that was open.  I looked, and discovered that I could latch the storage area from the inside.  My hopes soared, until I considered my escape route.  If the horde should come back, what would I do?  I wouldn’t be able to exit the front, and I couldn’t wait them out.  Who knows how long these shufflers can last?  I imagined myself, standing atop the railcar, looking out over a crowd of zombies extending in every direction.  A castaway, stranded upon a steel island in a sea of the dead.  No.  Whatever I used would have to have an escape route.
That’s when I saw the mill just up the tracks.  The building looked sturdy, with a limited number of doors and windows on the ground floor.  It was tall, so I could have a great view of the surrounding area.   Consequently it also meant that I would be able to spy a zombie from a long way off.  The facility was huge, with lots of exit paths.  The only way that I could be completely surrounded is if the horde numbered in the thousands, but I decided that was highly unlikely.  The zombie population was actively hunting, and a horde of one thousand zombies was going to be searching for a large food source.  They’re not going to lay siege to a building this size for one human happy meal to-go.  So I stood there, hidden amongst the rail cars, looking at the place that was to be my home.  It felt perfect.
The sound of crunching gravel made my heart suspend its efforts.  The sound was irregular, like a person was dragging a load behind them.  Crunch drag, crunch drag, crunch drag.  My eyes flew across the scene.  From my spot, I couldn’t see who was coming, but I was sure it had to be a zombie.  Then it sounded like a pair of steps.  Now it sounded like one shuffler.  The echoes off the cars were playing tricks on me.  I thought to climb the car I was standing next to, but I didn’t want to be trapped.  I could hear it mumbling now, in low, unintelligible noises and grunts.  I could feel my heart start again as I considered making a run for it across the yard.  Long ways, but I bet I could do it faster than any dead-head.  Whatever was coming was now very close, and by the sounds of it, the thing was going to move right by my hiding spot.
In a panic, I ducked and went under the railcar.
Stupid, stupid boy.
I used to fantasize that I was a ninja,