"The night shift pt II" by Lee Stormy

They drove through a burning city with the cassualties fastly increasing, but these dead didn't stay dead. Nobody knew where it came from. Conspiracy-theories about bio-terrorist attacks were heard on the radio. Tom, a young ex-security guard and his wife Sara just barely escaped an undead siege at a local seven-eleven, they looted the neccesities as food, water and some weaponry in the form of a pair of handaxes. They were silently taking in the view of undead roaming the streets for fresh meat and occasionaly the lone infected who attacked the dead, they attacked everything but because the dead were already dead, seemed stronger than the living and felt no pain it usually ended in the favor of the dead, adding the infected to their undead-ranks. It had been two days since the outbreak and Tom and Sara were still on the run, the only times they stopped was for gas and to see if there were friends and family alive, they were not.
"One last adress to check" Tom mumbled.
He drove to his best friends house. It looked clear from the outside, he rang the doorbell, the door opened and Dieter's head stuck out.

"Hiiii Tom, what's up with you, you look like you've seen a ghost?"

"Dude, are you serious? The whole world is going to hell and you didn't know?!"

"What are you talking about?"

"Zombies, man!"

Tom was almost ready to slap the lonely stoner, after all he's been through this dude was just toking it up in his bedroom, but he was interrupted by bone-chilling screams.

"Holy crap, what the fucking shit was that? Dieter asked.

"Get inside, Sara"

Tom took the machete and one of the hand-axes, as three infected came running around the corner Tom braced himself. The first one was easily dispatched due to the hand-axe slashing in his head, the second one bashed Tom to the ground and was about to jump him but was pushed aside by the third one. The two infected remaining infected were fighting each other, this gave Tom a chance to get up and run inside.

"What the fuck was that all about? Did you just kill a man?" Dieter asked.

"Put the tv on something else than cartoon network once in a while." Tom snared.

"What Tom is trying to say in his own unique way is that we are in the middle of an epidemic where the dead come back to life and attack the living, what you just witnessed were the infected." Sara explained to Dieter. 

The pothead watched in horror as he flipped through the channels.

"This can't be happening" He mumbled.

"Well it is and we have to survive, we've seen enough of these movies together, we know how this is gonna turn out if we don't take actions and just wait until the military is going to figure shit out, but man, am I pleased to see you alive" Tom sighed.

"What have you got for food?"

"Just some canned goods, apples and chocolate brownies for the munchies, you?"

"Shit, I don't know, thirty-something cans of beans and stuff, some canned soup,  a bag of oranges, chocolate for Sara and sixty liters of water and ten cans of coke."

"Woaah, that's enough to feed us for weeks" Dieter said euforically.

"Yeah but we've got to ration it out, we have to go out sooner or later for more but I'd like to catch my breath for a while because if you would've gone outside you'd know it ain't no picknick, first thing on the list is secure your place. Do you have any lumber?"

"Dude, do I look like the do-it-yourself-type?" Dieter said without blinking an eye.

Tom had to laugh a little at the thought, this was the first time he'd laughed since this all happened.

"Didn't you complain about your neighbour always banging hammers, drilling and sawing in the middle of the night?"

"Yeah fucking Mr. Peeters was building a shed for his tools"

Suddenly it dawned to the stoner where Tom was going with this. "You want to go outside and steal his things don't you?"

"It's the only chance we have if we want to make it out of this alive, so yeah, I want to go outside!"

"Tom, No!" Sara spoke out loud.

Tom had forgotten she was here, he was to busy contemplating plans.

"Babe, we have to..."

"No. We don't have to do anything, we're safe where we are now!"

Just than they heard the distinct moans of the dead coming back to life.
Tom had seen corpses that were either severly decomposed or burnt, those were the dangerous once because they didn't make a sound except when you were close enough to attack, than they made a snarling gurgling noise. The fresh ones moaned as if they couldn't understand what they did here once more.
The two infected had murdered eachother in their frenzy. Tom sweared, why didn't he see that coming.

"Dieter, you were always good at stabbing people in the back in call of duty, let's see how good you are at it in real life."

He gave Dieter the machete.

"Come on!"

Tom slowly opened the frontdoor, he peeked through and saw the two zombies, one was terribly injured at the belly and chest, you could see his insides, Dieter spewed his lunch. The other apparently had bled to death because of a huge cut in his neck and the amount of blood on his sports-jacket. The sound of Dieter barfing attrackted the first one which got the other's attention soon after.

"Watch out, Dieter, they are faster when rigor mortis hasn't kicked in yet!"

The color of Dieter's face resembled the one of the dead. Tom swung the hand-axe at the open stomach zombie zombie's head, it came of clean, this made Dieter faint. The other came close enough to Dieter to sink his teeth in him but Tom reacted fast enough to prevent it, he slashed the zombie in the back of his head. Pieces of brain and blood spilled all over Dieter's  blue sweatshirt, Tom pulled the abomination of his friend and looked out for any other strays that might lingered around.
"Hey dickhead, wake up!"

Tom shook his passed out friend heavily. Dieter came to but as soon as he saw the blood he passed out again.

"Goddamnit, Dieter!"

Tom opened the door to Dieter's house and carried him inside.

"Oh my god, was he bit?" Sara asked.

"No, he just couldn't stand the blood, I'll have to go alone."

"The hell you are!"

"Sara, listen."

"NO! You listen, you've been taking risks from day one, I'm coming with you, I can fend for myself!"
"
But honey, I don't want you to get hurt."

"Neither do I but you said it yourself. We have to stick together."

Tom knew there was no changing her mind, he always tried but failed miserably.

"Fine! But stay close."

They exited the house after putting Dieter in the sofa. They sneaked to mr Peeters' backyard, "eureka" Tom thought, finally a break for the couple. There was enough planks to board up the house with enough to spare for firewood if the electricity stops working.
After relocating the lumber from the neighbor's side to Dieter's, Tom went back to check out the shed. He opened the door without checking first and closed the door immediately after, in the shed was the neighbor, he had hung himself when all this happend. When Tom regained his nerve he opened the door again, the man hanging there swung gently, Tom poked him with the machete, The beam the rope was tied to broke through and Peeters fell to the ground with a big thud.

"No gurgling or moaning, he must be really dead." Tom whispered to himself.

He walked too the shed for a saw, hammer and  some nails, when he gathered the things he walked over Mr. Peeters he got grabbed.

"What the fuck? You were dead" Tom yelled.

Than it dawned on him, when he hung himself it crushed his throat, preventing the ability to speak or make sound. Why didn't he move? As a result from the rope tieing of the bloodflow to his brain from his body, it went into a sort of slumber but when the beam broke, it loosened the rope. Tom chopped in mr. Peeters' head maybe a dozen times out of sheer panic, after the second chop he was truely dead but Tom didn't notice after the tenth chop the undead head was nothing more than a bloody messy stump. The sight of the gore made Tom a bit sick but he held his stomachcontents inside, he knew he needed the energy. The ex-guard went back to Dieter's home to see that Sara and the toker were in a discussion about what do do next. Tom joined in and told that it were best if they cut the planks inside and maybe it was better if they screwed in the boards instead of banging on them with a hammer. Tom had a screwdriver in his car and he took some screws from the shed earlier. So they started working on it. Dieter cut the boards and Tom screwed them in while Sara was prepping a reunion dinner out of some chicken and vegetables Dieter had lying around. It had took Tom 3 hours to board up the house, he did a fine job, he did say so himself, no cracks were left to put a finger through and it was good wood so it could take a beating.

They kept inside for most of the time but sometimes they needed some fresh air than they got up to the roof, Now the dead had really taken over, it was the 26th of January more than a month had passed since the outbreak. From up the roof you had a clear view down the street. Tom had figured out that when temperatures got really low the dead were a lot slower. Mostly they didn't even got up. The power had gone out so there was no heating but the boarded up windows and the fact that Dieter's house was well isolated kept it bareable when you clothed warm. Tom had broken into mr. Peeters' house and stole all the clothes, including the ones of mrs. Peeters, He had to take her out in the bathroom, apparently she took her own life by cutting her wrists.

"Maybe that's why her husband hung himself?" Tom speculated.

Every once and a while when it was really cold Dieter and him got out and took out the shamblers in the street. Dieter was over the whole gore thing and blamed it on him being very stoned that day, he figured out how many they had killed allready, hundred-and-twenty-five, the bodies they dumped at a big construction yard where the workers had digged a giant hole for the fundation. When they felt confident enough they looted some abbandoned houses to keep their foodsupply up, in one of them they even found a rifle, it was an old gun but it still worked and was easy to handle. They only shot it when they needed it because if you shot it more than once you would have a horde of zombies coming to the sound, they found this out the hard way when Sara was picking of zombies from up the roof, all of a sudden there were hundreds of zombies in the street trying to find the source of the gunshots. They didn't move for 2 days, scared to attract their attention, at night the moans of the dead kept them up but eventually the horde moved on when they heard a new prey in the form of a big blast twenty kilometers away. Dieter guessed that was the old fireworks plant because the blast lit the sky in different shades of green, red and white. Once in a while they heard a weird screaching sound at night but when they took a look there was... nothing. Dieter thought he saw a girl in the middle of the street once but he wasn't sure if he dreamt it or not.
One day Tom was going to loot some nearby houses, he took Sara with him. He found it neccesary for her to learn to fend for her.

"If my luck runs out and you need to fend for yourself, you must be prepared!"

"Don't talk like that, we are going to get through this together."

"But if there were something ..."

"Shhht!" Sara interupted Tom. "I thought I saw something!"

Behind a window there was a white flash, it was so fast that Sara wasn't sure if it was her imagination or not.

"Maybe it's time to get out of here?" Tom said.

"We have looted enough to last us an extra two weeks and only had two encounters, let's quite while we're ahead."

When they got ready to return to their safehouse they heard the screaching, It really was bonechilling.

"We need to hurry!"

"What the hell is that?"

"I don't know, honey, but I ain't sticking around to find out!" Tom said.

They ran back but they heard a window break behind them. Tom took the rifle from his back and turned around. He saw a blonde haired little girl dressed in cute pink pyjamas standing in the broken glass, just watching, she couldn't have been more than ten.

"Why doesn't she attack?" Tom whispered.

The girl lauched forward in the direction of the couple, producing her vile screach. She was fast, too fast for Tom to take good aim, so he hit her with the butt of the gun when she came in range, it sent her flying but didn't kill her. When she got up her feet again, she screached at the couple baring her teeth and backed off.

"What the fuck?"

The little girl went back in the house and got out of sight. "Time to go!"