Joe VS The Zombies Read online

  Contents

  JOE VS THE ZOMBIES

  JOE VS THE ZOMBIES

  I was daydreaming at work when the news reports started. My mind went from a fantasy shopping spree at the local gun store to scrambling for more information. I had one hand on the radio dial and the other on my keyboard, clumsily typing in the address for one of the prepper forums I lurked on.

  What I was seeing and hearing didn’t make me feel any better. It seemed the reports about people all over the world suddenly falling on their family, friends and neighbors wasn’t some hoax, or a misunderstood drug frenzy.

  No, it was all too real, and the video I saw from our state capitol cinched it for me. I grabbed my stuff from the corner, shrugged into my jacket and mumbled some excuse about irritable bowels at my boss. Explosive diarrhea sealed the deal. I was out the door within ten minutes of first hearing about the zombie horde, leaving my coworkers and one very mad boss staring at my dust.

  The first stop was the building’s basement parking garage, where I jumped in my old truck and revved the engine. I lost myself for a minute, staring out at all the other cars parked in tidy rows around me. No one else was in sight, and I had the brief thought that I maybe should have warned my coworkers about what was coming.

  Nah, I decided. They wouldn’t have listened, and it would have wasted valuable time.

  I mean, I liked them well enough, but when it came down to it, my ass was priority number one. One thing I’d learned at my daddy’s knee was that no one was going to do a damned thing for you, so you’d better learn to do for yourself. That sorry son of a bitch drove that lesson home all too well, and it stuck with me.

  With a shake, I let up off the gas and pushed the brake. Shifting into reverse, I eased back out into the aisle. No point in having a fender bender just as I needed to haul ass. Time was of the essence, as they say.

  I shifted into drive and drove out of the garage, still all alone, slowly coming up into the bright fall day. My mind was half on the driving situation and half on what I was going to do next.

  It wasn’t something I was proud of, necessarily, but I had gotten three good credit cards for just such a situation. I’d used them sparingly, always paying back whatever I charged, and now I had a source of ready funds. All I had to do was hit the stores before the rest of the city figured out what was going on.

  The first stop was the big outdoors-man store on the north side of the city. It was every red-blooded country boy’s dream, with all the hunting supplies you could want. Since I wouldn’t have the time to go through any waiting period, I focused on shotguns and lots of ammo. I picked up some good bows and a couple of cross bows, with all the arrows and bolts I could shove into those big carts the store provided.

  While I was ranging around the store, I picked up sleeping bags, tarps, a big tent, two camping stoves and all the fuel I could handle. I went back for a second cart after leaving the first at the register, and loaded it all up again. The way I figured it, there’s no such thing as too many bullets. That thought made me reexamine my decision to avoid the waiting period, and I picked up some rifles and the ammo that went with them. If there was time, I could come back for them, and if not, well, nothing really lost but some time.

  A third cart was filled with freeze-dried camping food, some good quality lighters and several cans of lighter fluid.

  By the time I got back to the register to check out, the manager was standing by my first two carts, looking a little worried.

  “May I ask what all this is about?” He waved a hand over the full carts.

  I shrugged and gave him the biggest grin I could manage. “Sure. I’m having a big party, going to take all my buddy’s out to the cabin and give them the best hunting trip of their lives.”

  I cocked my head at him. “Because the zombies are coming, and we’re all going to die, you know.”

  His eyes went wide, head tipping back so far he almost fell over. The clerk, who had been ringing stuff up while I chatted up his boss, chuckled.

  “Awesome, dude.”

  It took a minute, but the manager finally found his voice again. “I hope you don’t think you’re paying with a check today.”

  “Absolutely not. I’ve got a gold card, and I’m not afraid to use it.”

  His hand went out, and I pulled the card from my wallet. Without a word, he went to the charge machine and swiped the plastic. After a minute, he seemed satisfied at the available credit line, and handed it back to me.

  “Thank you for your business, sir. I hope you’ll tell all of your friends where you got such quality equipment at rock bottom prices.”

  I nodded and winked at him. “I certainly will. I’m sure they’ll all be in very soon, with equally large lines of credit.”

  The manager gave me a funny look, shot a squint at the giggling clerk, and walked off, his back stiff. Somehow, I think he knew I was shining him on, but he wasn’t about to turn down such a large purchase. It probably bumped his sales quota up by several notches.

  Even I winced when I saw the final total, but I signed the receipt with a flourish and waited while a couple of other clerks arrived to take my haul out to the truck. It took a while to get it all loaded and secured—the store threw in a couple of ratchet straps to help with that—but before long I was driving out to my second stop.

  * * * *

  I’d only gotten about a block before I realized I couldn’t actually load anything else on the truck. I dillydallied at a stop sign, trying to decide what to do about that. Someone behind me had an issue with me sitting there when there was no traffic, and blew a long trill on his car horn. I glanced up in the rear view mirror, but couldn’t see anything with the truck bed so loaded down.

  A quick glance at the side mirror showed me some dude in a yuppie car—a Subaru or something equally leftist, like he couldn’t buy an American-made vehicle—who was giving me a stern look. Typical. Not even going to flip me the bird. He likely thought that would be rude. I snorted.

  But I shrugged and let up off the brake, my mind suddenly made up. I’d go home and off load this pile of stuff, then go back out for more. From the looks of things around the city, no one was catching on to just what a big problem we had headed our way.

  Too bad for them.

  When I peeled out from the stop sign, I gassed the engine good, leaving a trail of hot, dark smoke right in Subaru’s face. Served him right, being all judgmental about me and my truck. I patted the dashboard gently, and made a mental note to do something about that over-due oil change, though. Never know when I might need my trusty ol’ rust bucket, what with the apocalypse, and all.

  I made good time out to my house, since it was the middle of a working day, and a Wednesday. If it had been Friday, it would have taken longer, because most people were in a rush to get out of town for the weekend.

  I had a funny feeling the term ‘weekend’ wasn’t going to mean much anymore, not once the killing really started. And though there’d been no sign of anything wrong here, it didn’t mean it wasn’t coming. That was one thing I was sure of. I wasn’t jumping the gun, getting all worked up over nothing. I was just that guy, the one who wanted to be prepared but never could find the money, who saw the signs and added them up to holy hell, it’s the end of the world.

  It took me an hour to unload and haul all my new stuff down into the basement. I was sweaty, tired, and getting anxious, worried that I was wasting too much time on this task, when there was still so much left to be done.

  My mind was racing with figuring out the best routes to take on my remaining trips, how to cut even a few seconds off the timetable. It was making me crazy, with my heart thumping hard, so I grabbed a beer from the fridge and took a moment to cool off.


  The neighborhood I lived in was pretty lower class, not quite poor, or even working poor, but not exactly desired by the up-and-coming of the city’s population. It was filled mostly with older people who were spending their last years in the houses they worked all their lives for, and a few families just climbing up the social ladder. There wasn’t much crime here, which had been a huge selling point. An even better one was the old fallout shelter built under the house.

  That had excited me so much when I was first house shopping, I think the real estate agent started having a few unpleasant thoughts. I’m pretty sure she was thinking more along the lines of secret torturer, when my little prepper eyes were bugging out of my head at the plans I suddenly had for the place.

  In the last couple of years, I’d spent every moment I could, and every dime I could spare, getting the shelter into prime condition. Stocking it was a little harder, because with a mortgage and a dead end job, there just wasn’t much left to spare. But I did what I could, a few things from Mountain House here, the odd haul from Costco there. After my shopping trips today, it would be pretty much done.

  Which reminded me of something that had been itching at the back of my mind: who I wanted to invite into my little bunker. I knew who I wanted, but I was pretty sure she’d say no. My neighbor to the north, a sexy bundle of joy named Karin Jones, didn’t think much of me, nor my plans to prepare for upcoming disasters.

  When I tried to talk to her about getting a few things in, just in case, she’d snorted and said what every prepper hears sooner or later: I’ll just come to your house.

  Of course, I scoffed at that, telling her the door would be locked by then, with me safely on the other side, but she’d only laughed that adorable little giggle she had and moved on to some guy with big pecs and washboard abs. It was disappointing, considering she’d never noticed my physique, which wasn’t anything to make a magazine cover, but wasn’t pig slop, either.

  One of my other stops for the day was to the store where Karin worked, the big Costco on the west side of town. I planned to get as much as I could shove into the truck there, and maybe make two trips if things worked out. I’d talk to Karin while I’m there, see if she had any idea what was about to come down on humanity. She probably wouldn’t listen, but I’d get her up to speed anyway.

  In my heart, I hoped she’d cling to me like a wet tee shirt, begging me to help her. But that was just one of many dreams that got me through the night. She probably would laugh, slap me on the bicep, and turn to the next customer.

  But, what the hell. I didn’t have anything to lose, and maybe something would stick in her mind and she’d think of me once the zompoc started.

  I finished the last of the beer and chucked the bottle into the recycling bin. It tinkled but didn’t break. I gave the bin a kick as I went past it, out to the garage. After the next day or so, I wouldn’t be following any damned rules about sorting and binning anything. Though now that I thought about it, I probably should be figuring out how to keep ahead of the garbage that would build up in the bunker.

  One more thing to worry about. And it would have to wait until I finished stocking up, because time was slipping away from me and I needed to get going.

  * * * *

  The parking lot of the Costco was about as busy as usual. Plenty of soccer mom vans, good ol’ boy pick-em-up trucks, and the vast swaths of economy cars mixed in with a significant number of flex fuel and hybrids. Typical for the area.

  I was just happy to see that I was still playing ahead of the crowd, and shouldn’t have any trouble getting what I needed here. I could run the shelves, catch up to Karin, and then get back home. If things went well, I would try for a second trip before things went to heck and gone.

  I had to park further away than I’d like, causing me to trek about half a mile to the big front entrance of the store. I grabbed a cart and a couple of boxes to contain the small stuff, and hit the first aisle. After I got going, I wished I’d made a list, but it was a little late for that. I’d just have to go by my memory of all those prepper forum posts I’d read, with the lists of things to get in an TEOFWAWKI situation.

  All too soon the cart was full, with as many jumbo packs of toilet paper as I could manage stacked on top. People were looking at me funny, but I just grinned and kept moving. It might have been the decent thing to do to warn them, but they probably wouldn’t listen. The end of the world was so far outside their comfortable lives that it wouldn’t sink in until they were faced with the actual emergency.

  And then it would be too late. Suck to be them, I guess.

  So, I kept moving, and ended up just where I’d hoped: in Karin’s check out line. She’d rung up almost all the stuff in my cart before she realized it was me, and the expression on her face said it all.

  Well, Joe’s at it again.

  It wasn’t surprising. It was the same look she got whenever I’s show her some little gadget for my prepping stash, or talk about how it would be a good idea to have some food put back, in case the power grid went down or something.

  But I had to give her credit, she didn’t hold it against me. Karin gave me a bright smile and kept on swiping the bar codes across the reader.

  “Joe, planning on digging in for a while? You certainly seem to have picked up enough stuff to keep you fed for a month or so.”

  I couldn’t speak at first, caught as usual by her good looks. With her long, dark hair and slender body, she always took my breath away for a second. Finally I swallowed and grinned.

  “Something like that. Have you been watching the latest news reports? Seems there’s this thing about people going crazy and attacking each other. It’s getting pretty bad out there.”

  Karin shrugged. Her eyes were watching the items going by on the check out belt. I knew I’d done it wrong, came on too strong. Again.

  “You mean the bath salts thing? Didn’t they find out it was some drug or other like that?”

  Well, damn. I let out a deep breath and pushed on.

  “Not that I’ve seen. I think this is the real thing this time, Karin. You should be getting ready yourself, make some plans to ride out whatever this is.”

  The last jumbo pack of toilet paper ran by the scanner, and Karin hit the key to total my purchase. Her eyes went wide, and she gave me a side glance that said she knew I couldn’t afford this much stuff. I just handed her the special gold credit card, the one I hadn’t used yet, with it’s virgin balance.

  Karin eyed the card with suspicion, but ran it through the machine. When it came back approved, she sniffed and completed the transaction. She handed me the receipt to sign, still not meeting my gaze.

  I was certain I’d messed this up, so I just signed and handed everything back to her. Karin tore the carbon off the receipt and handed it back to me.

  “Well, thank you for shopping at Costco. Have a great day!”

  “Sure, thanks. Um. If you change your mind—if you, you know, ever need anything,—you know where I’ll be.”

  “Of course,” she said, but her mind was already on the customer behind me, who was staring at the pile of stuff I’d just bought. She only had a big bag of baby carrots and a container of salad mix. I felt guilty about not noticing her and letting her go ahead of me, until I saw the woman frown. The tumblers were clearly turning over in her head, and the result was plain to see: one of those survivalist nuts.

  Well, she wasn’t totally wrong. I grabbed the cart with my stuff and gave her a jaunty wave before I turned it towards the exit. I couldn’t resist throwing some unsolicited advice at her, though.

  “If you’re smart, you’ll get more than rabbit food, lady. Bad times are coming.”

  The woman turned her nose up and dropped her things on the belt. Karin was shaking her head as she rang up the two items. It wasn’t even worth driving out to Costco for that stuff. It wouldn’t last a day, and then the woman would be hungry. I just hoped she didn’t have kids.

  But, that was her problem. I had places to go
, things to do. I wanted to be ready to bolt into the bunker the minute things got hairy around here. If Karin showed up, then I’d take her in. It was my plan all along, anyway. If not, then I’d be sad, but it wasn’t like I could force her to get with the program.

  While I loaded the truck and got ready to head home, I had to force my mind to get off the idea that I should just kidnap Karin and force her to join me in the bunker. Somehow I didn’t think she’d put up with that, and it would make for some rough times while I tried to save her sexy, tight ass.

  * * * *

  I kept a close eye on the news while I was putting away the last load of stuff from Costco. I’d made a point to get in a different lane the next two times I went, though I couldn’t avoid the look Karin gave me when she saw me back.

  It made me feel bad, that she might finally have lost whatever nugget of interest she might have had in me, but when it came down to it, I was a survivor. Or hoped to be, at any rate. She could decide what she wanted, and if that meant she didn’t make it, well. I’d be sad, and if I could admit it to myself, really heartbroken. But there was nothing I could realistically do about it.

  Over the past couple of years, I’d tried to help her learn about stuff, even simple disaster prep, but she would always say it was the government’s job to help the citizens. She didn’t seem to get what happened with Katrina and Rita and other disasters showed the government couldn’t save us. Or wouldn’t, if you believed some of the conspiracy theories out there.

  All I knew was what I’d seen myself. People suffered and died waiting for someone else to save them. I wasn’t going to do that, and if I could save Karin, I would. But Joe Cooper was Numero Uno.

  The all news channel I was watching while I finished eating up some of the last frozen stuff I had in the freezer had started talking more about the reports of weird activity around the world. It was happening everywhere now, even smaller cities in the US. I knew it wouldn’t be long before it was here.