Zombie Apocalypse Serial #2

98 Pages·2016·0.54 MB·English

by  Tyorbrains Ivana E

Zombie Apocalypse Serial
Book Two
by
Ivana E. Tyorbrains
Copyright 2012
Episode 2 – The Biggest Buffoons On The
Planet
Caleb Conway
I met Sabrina in sophomore English class. Our teacher put us in adjacent
desks, and when I sat down Sabrina turned to me and said hi.
I nearly puked.
Sophomore year is a scary time. All the posing you’ve done since middle
school suddenly gets real come sophomore year. People aren’t joking about sex
anymore. They’re doing it. By sophomore year, an exotic-looking black girl like
Sabrina, a girl who smells like coconut and gives you a boner every time she
walks by—this isn’t some novelty. This a possibility, a creature who is just as
curious and alive as you are, and may well give it up to somebody before the
year is through.
Just seeing her makes you wonder if that somebody could be you, and you
freak out a little.
I convinced myself that Sabrina’s somebody wasn’t me and never could be.
Sabrina was a grand prize babe, her shiny black skin, her bright green eyes, the
way her teeth just popped like a flashbulb when she smiled…she was a girl who
dated quarterbacks and wrestling captains, not a loser who sat around plucking
on his guitar.
Sabrina and I sat together for sophomore English all year long. The next year
we sat next to each other in Spanish. We were together for World History during
senior year. She said hi to me in the halls. She wrote her phone number in my
yearbook.
I was such a putz. The girl was writing her phone number in my yearbook, but
I was so convinced that I was out of her league that I never once considered
picking up the phone and calling her.
After graduation, Sabrina went to UTEP on a volleyball scholarship. I piddled
around with a couple rock bands.
Sabrina and I met up at the ten-year reunion. She asked me out. At the end of
our first date she told me she always thought I was cute and wondered why I
wouldn’t give her the time of day.
“Because you were a prom queen and I was a screwup,” I told her.
“Well, now I’m a single mom and you’re doing alright for yourself as far as I
can see.”
But I wasn’t doing alright. I was a struggling musician with a day job at a call
center. I decided that night to become the person Sabrina thought me to be. I
hung up my guitar. I focused on my day job and two months later I got my first
promotion. Six months after that I got promoted again.
Now I’m making good money and Sabrina and I are talking about moving in
together. In fact, the day before Sabrina got the letter that changed everything,
she and I drove all over San Antonio to look at houses for sale.
That drive around town was a really good thing for us. We stopped at eight
different homes, all of them big and expensive, and I never once got cold feet
about where this was going. I have a connection with that woman—with her
daughter too. Sabrina’s daughter, Cori, is a sweet little nine-year-old, much more
quiet and reserved than her mother, but destined to be just as beautiful. Cori and
I get along great, and I think she’s genuinely excited about getting me as a
stepdad. I help her with her homework, and when we’re done, I play games with
her on the Xbox.
Of course, all of this was before the letter.
In hindsight, I can say the reason we got out was a set of lucky coincidences.
Sabrina was on a break at work when the man came and gave her the letter.
Normally she doesn’t take a morning break, but a particularly nasty customer
who wanted to return a broken figurine without a receipt had left her rattled, and
she stepped outside just in time for the letter to find her.
Normally, Sabrina wouldn’t have even taken the letter. This is a girl who grew
up in Housing Authority projects on Roosevelt Avenue. She had to fend off
pimps and crackheads every time she walked out her front door. She’s not at all
afraid to tell weirdos to buzz off. But she said there was something about the
man that made her trust him. She said she felt drawn to him somehow, and when
he offered her the letter she couldn’t refuse it.
Normally, a letter like that one would find its way into the recipient’s hands
and get thrown in the garbage. The letter was predicting an imminent zombie
apocalypse for Christ’s sake.
But Sabrina believed him. The first time I read the letter, I believed him too.
I should pause here to say that Sabrina and I both hold some unconventional
opinions. Sabrina thinks the US and Isreali governments worked together to
make 9/11 happen, and that the CIA created the AIDS virus to ensure Africa
always remained a chaotic Third World country.
I used to blow off people who believed in these fringy conspiracy theories, but
Sabrina has shown me stuff that has blown my mind. She has a video about the
Waco massacre that is pretty incredible. And her books on the JFK
assassination…I don’t know why anyone thinks a lone gunman was even a
possibility.
One time Sabrina made me watch a short video about Timothy Frye that was
posted on the This was a guy who was on track to become the richest man in the
history of the world, whose inventions were supposed to cure cancer, who was
the darling of the biotech boom in the 90’s, and then he disappeared. In that
video they showed a memo Dr. Frye had written to a graduate assistant while he
was a student at Johns Hopkins. The memo took the grad student to task for
many perceived failings, both in his teaching and in his moral philosophy. One
particularly disturbing line from the memo read, “Humans like to think they will
own the earth in perpetuity, forgetting that 99% of all species that have ever
lived are now extinct.”Planet Gulag web site.
When Sabrina showed me the letter she got on the Riverwalk, my mind
brought forth a picture of that handwritten memo to the grad student. I’m no
handwriting expert, but I am 100% certain it was a match.
“What did he say to you when he gave you the letter?” I asked.
“He came up to me, and said ‘Excuse me this is for you.’ Then he gave me
the letter and left while I was reading it.”
I pulled up a picture of Timothy Frye on my phone and handed it to her.
“I was thinking the exact same thing,” she said. “Looking at this picture….it
was him. I’m positive of it.”
“So what do we do?” I asked.
“What do you mean, what do we do?” Sabrina said. “He tells us exactly what
to do in the letter. I think we’d better do it!”
Here’s what the letter said.
Dear Citizen,

Thank you for taking the time to read this note. I selected you to receive it
because you look like a genuinely good person, who is worthy of the valuable
knowledge I am about to impart.

In one week’s time, the world as we all know it will come to an end. Five days
from now, a new ailment will make itself known. People will wake up with
symptoms not terribly dissimilar from the common cold.

Pray that you don’t wake up on Monday feeling sick.

That is why you are getting this letter, Citizen. There is still time for you to get
out, and I wish to give you that chance. In a few hours, patient zero will contract
the sickness and begin infecting those around him. He won’t know he is doing
so, because the plague will sit dormant within its victims until Monday morning.

But by Monday, patient zero will have infected the world, and what looked
like a cold on Monday will become fatal on Tuesday.

That’s when the frightening stuff will begin.

The plague infects the brain and the dead body “reanimates.” Zombies. I’m
talking about zombies, Citizen. In less than a week, the zombie apocalypse will
be upon us.

And now we get to the meat of the letter. There are ways you can protect
yourself from the coming plague, but you must act quickly. Here are some
guidelines for you.

1. San Antonio is pretty safe today, but by tomorrow there will be people in
this city infected with the plague and they won’t even know it. You and your
closest loved ones need to be out of the city by tomorrow morning.

2. If you don’t have a gun, now would be a good time to get one. There’s a
gun show in New Braunfels tomorrow. If you buy a gun there, you don’t have to
do the waiting period. Make sure you get lots of ammo.

3. Travel north. Use state highways and back roads. Do not use the Interstate.
Aim for a remote location with a low population density, like the Dakotas or
Montana. Along the way, stop at stores in small towns and rural areas to build
up your provisions, but only for the first two days. By Saturday morning, anyone
and everyone you meet may be capable of giving you the plague. You want to be
in a secluded space where you can set up camp and begin your new life.

4. On Monday, the plague will cease being airborne. On Tuesday, the zombies
will arrive.

5. The zombies move about because the plague has reactivated the dead tissue
in their brains. A bullet to the brain or an axe to the forehead will bring them
down. Zombies can only spread the plague to you with a bite. Don’t be afraid to
chop at their heads and get their blood on your clothes. Those who survive will
be the ones who aren’t afraid to get messy.

6. The zombies will not generate body heat, hence a cold winter will freeze
them in their tracks. If you can stay warm, the northern part of the country is
where you want to be. During the winter, it will be a relatively safe place.
7. The zombie plague will be with humanity for the rest of your life, but the
worst of it will be the first few years, and the worst of that will be the first seven
months. Hang in there. Have hope. Those who survive will have the chance to
rebuild a kinder, gentler world.

8. After the plague happens, do not show this letter to anyone. Even though it
is impossible for you to stop this, they will blame you if they know you got an
advance warning.

9. You can’t save everyone. Every person you bring with you is another mouth
to feed. You only have time to save yourself and your children. Make sure you
say your goodbyes to everyone else tonight.

10. I know you think I’m a crazy loon, but I’m not. I know with 100% certainty
that these things are going to happen. If you follow my instructions and none of
this comes to pass, you’ll have had a nice northern adventure and will have
rehearsed for an emergency, which isn’t a bad outcome at all. But if you don’t
follow my instructions and these things do happen, you will be full of regret until
the moment a zombie bites you, and you become just another walking corpse.

Good luck.
“We should go to the police,” I said.
“They won’t believe us,” said Sabrina. “And then when it all goes down,
they’ll think we were a part of it and throw us in jail.”
“We have to warn somebody,” I said. “Maybe there is still time to stop this.
Maybe if the government gets involved--”
“We’ll scan the letter and email it to Planet Gulag,” Sabrina said. “They can
warn the world. People can choose if they want to believe it or not. We don’t
have time to convince anyone. We have to pack up and get going.”
“But where are we going?” I asked.
“I don’t know. We should go north, just like Frye suggested. We’ll load up on
camping gear and we’ll go to that gun show in New Braunfels.”
“What about your dad?” I asked. “What about my brother?
Sabrina’s father, a widower, lived in Galveston, which was the wrong way.
My parents weren’t even worth discussing. My father died when I was sixteen
and my mother re-married a pastor from Iowa who didn’t approve of me dating a
black woman. My brother…well, my brother was sort of a nomad. Last I’d heard
he was backpacking in Eastern Europe.
“I’ll call my dad tonight,” she said. “I’ll ask him to get in his car and drive
north to meet us for a camping trip. If he refuses, I’ll read him the letter. If he
still refuses, there’s nothing more we can do.”
Sabrina’s dad had retired with visions of the good life on the beach. The life
he got was one of constant rebuilding after every hurricane season. Sabrina and I
had begged him to move back to San Antonio and be closer to his granddaughter
but he had no interest in coming back. He was a strange old man who wanted to
be alone, so that’s where we left him.
“We’re really gonna do this, aren’t we?” I said.
“We have to. Maybe nothing will come of it and we’ll feel dumb. But what if
something does come of it? What if it’s true?”
“If it’s true, then we’re all fucked.”