Welcome

Welcome to my little zombie story. My name is Derrick Spears, I'm a 25 yr old database admin in Norman, OK. This story has been rolling around in my head for a while, so I thought I would put it up for your reading enjoyment. If you like it, please spread the word, and leave me a comment or two :) Thank again, and enjoy!

Chapter One
Chapter Two

Chapter Two

What you have to understand is that theses aren't the zombies we grew up knowing. These aren't the resident evil, dawn of the dead Romero zombies. No, they are worse, so much worse. In the games and movies before the crisis the zombies were rotting pieces of flesh. That isn't the case with the 12:09 virus. As John Wilkins died in the hospital that day, the virus was forced to mutate, to find a way to continue living. We heard that the virus worked as kind of a group conscience. Well, I should be careful, conscience implies intelligence, and don't get me wrong, they are dumb as fuck. What the virus does do though is communicate with itself throughout the entire body. It keeps its host alive, thereby keeping itself alive, by acting almost like an artificial life support system. The virus lined the veins and arteries of the host and pushed fresh, oxygenated blood throughout the body. It made the heart keep beating, and kept the most primitive parts of the brain alive. They didn't just attack us though, they attacked everything, if it was food, it was consumed. The virus doesn't care what it eats; it just needs the body fueled so it can continue its life cycle. I know, I know, at first this sounds like a lucky break, we can just shoot the heart and they die right? No, sure the heart dies, but the virus just reroutes itself. It doesn't need the heart, it just uses it while its there. Scary shit huh?

I'm getting ahead of myself though. I was on the floor for about 10 minutes still catching my breath when I decided it was time to act. I had a little survival pack that I had made for tornados, so I grabbed that and all the food that wasn't perishable and ferried it up into the attic. I grabbed blankets, pillows, an air mattress, a hammer and a few gallons of water. I woke Chelsea up and had her move into the attic while I ran cable up there for television. I was in the middle of hauling a TV up when I realized that I hadn't even thought about my brothers and sisters who live a few miles away. I picked up my phone to call them before remembering the phones were gone.

"Chelsea, don't freak out but I have to go get mom and the kids." I told her.

"If you leave me I am going to freak out Derrick, and how exactly do you plan on doing that anyways? We don't even have a car now thanks to those army guys."

I hadn't even thought of that. "Fuck, I don't know but I have to do something. Wait it's only a mile or so to where we left the car, I'll jump on my bike and I'll be there in 10 minutes. I have to go get them; they wouldn't be okay 5 minutes in that shithole house they live in if something happened. Baby, I know this is hard for you, but you have to suppress that, if this shit is for real, then the world is going to be a much different place. I love you, but I'm leaving!"

"Okay Derrick, please just be careful and quick. If something happens to you, I'll probably just sit up here and rot." She paused for a few seconds as tears starting to form in her eyes. "I'm scared Derrick, you have to hurry!"

"I will love, I'll lock the door behind me, just stay up here and you'll be fine, and I'll be back in under an hour. I love you."

I climbed down the attic stairs into the garage. I sat there for a minute, trying to build courage. I'm not going to lie, I was scared too, scared shitless after what I saw on the news. I had to do it though, I knew that my siblings were sitting there; terrified, hoping I was coming to get them. I grabbed my bike and took it out the side door trying to be quiet. I didn't want to attract any attention if any of those things were around here. I was confident that I could outrun them on the bike, but really trying to not test that theory out. I pushed the bike through the door and turned around to close it when my grip on the bike slipped and it slammed against my air conditioning unit. It had to be the loudest noise I've ever heard and it made my heart jump into my throat. I sat there holding my breath for a minute to see if anything unfavorable had been attracted by the crash. Once I was convinced that it was safe to proceed I wheeled the bike around to the front of the house, and peeked around the corner to make sure the coast was clear. I jumped on the bike, and took off.

If you're reading this that means you've made it as long as I have, and that you've probably had some of the same experiences that I have. But I have to take a minute to say just how eerie it was. Riding though my neighborhood on the way to our car was the worst. There wasn't a soul in sight. Sprinklers going off, dogs barking, but not a single person anywhere. It was like I had dropped into an episode of the twilight zone or something.

I made it there without seeing a single vehicle on the street. I stashed the bike behind some bushes and made my way back to the car. I got in, turned the key, and it wouldn't start. The engine was turning over, so the battery was fine. I tried for a couple more seconds before looking at the gas gauge.

"Fuck!" I screamed.

When we were stopped by the army trucks, we had just left the car. We didn't shut if off so it ran itself out of gas.

"What the fuck am I supposed to do now?" I said out loud.

I was so pissed that we didn't shut of the car. I started hitting the steering wheel in frustration. It was too far to ride the bike to my mom's house, and the car wasn't going anywhere. I was sitting there, trying to find plan B when it found me instead. It came in the form of bullets shattering the back windshield. I hit the floorboard in a panic as bullets tore through the car. Why the fuck were they shooting at me? Better question, who the fuck was shooting at me? After a few seconds the firing stopped and I could hear a truck approaching from the direction of the shots. I eased myself up and peeked around the headrest as another army truck came to a halt a few feet behind the car. A few soldiers jump out of the back of the truck and cautiously made their way towards the car. They were at full alert with their M-16s at the ready. I slid back down in the seat and started yelling.

"Don't fucking shoot me you idiots. I'm not one of those things."

I heard them whisper among themselves for a second.

"Come out of the car with your hands up one of the soldiers shouted."

"If I get out of this car, are you going to shoot me?" I replied.

"That depends on how long it takes you to get the fuck out of that car."

The soldier said it with such conviction that I knew he wasn't kidding. I immediately opened the door and got out of the car as fast as I could. I started to walk towards the soldiers. In an instant two of the soldiers had slammed me face first into the ground as another held me at gunpoint. Shit must be really bad I thought to myself, just a few hours ago the other soldiers while not quite polite, were at least civil. Now they were ready to kill anything that moved. One of the soldiers handcuffed me while another ran a gloved hand over me.

"What are you doing?"

"Checking your for any signs of a bite."

"I haven't been bitten, and why are you handcuffing me?"

"Because I told you to stay in your house, and you chose to ignore that." The officer with the gun told me.

I hadn't recognized it before, but these were the same soldiers who had stopped us earlier.

"Listen, I haven't been bitten, I haven't even seen one of those things!"

"You're fucking lucky then." One of the soldiers said as he stood me up.

"I know you guys have a job to do, but you have to let me go! I have to go get my family, if this shit gets bad they are screwed where they are."

"You're shit out of luck cowboy, cause shit is bad already, fuck bad, shit is fucked."

I never heard so many cusswords in a single sentence, but I knew these guys were stressed. I could also tell that I only had one shot at getting those guys to help me get my family, and time was running out fast.

"What's your name?" I asked the officer pointing the gun at me.

"I'm second Lieutenant Jensen." He started to say more but was cut off by one of the soldiers. "Sir why are we wasting time with this guy, fuck him, let's just leave and let him find his own way there."

"We have orders; we are supposed to help all civilians to safety." Jensen replied.

"We already helped him once, we did our job"

I could tell my only chance at getting a ride to get my family was through Jensen. He had to be 6'5" and built like a tank, so none of the other soldiers would argue with him too much.

"Jensen, your orders are to help civilians to shelter correct?" I asked

"You know that already, if you have a point you better hurry and fucking make it."

"My family isn't safe where they live, it's a piece of shit government house that won't last 5 minutes under siege. If you help me by going and getting them and taking us to my house you would be fulfilling your orders, and helping me at the same time. I swear it won't take more then 15 minutes."

He thought about it for a few seconds, sighed and told me "I'm going to give you 15 minutes, then I'm kicking you out of truck, and if I see you out of shelter again I'll shot you myself, do you understand me?"

I believed him. "Yes, I understand, if you help me, I promise I won't leave my house again."

"Get him in the truck, and take those handcuffs off of him." Jensen ordered.

Chapter One

The 12:09 Virus
Written by: Derrick Spears

I’ve read all the stories, watched all the movies, I even had a small stash of supplies. Did I think it would ever happen? No, who would of? It did though, and I find it pretty ironic that it happened on the first day of spring. When nature is coming alive, they did to. It’s been over two years since they showed up, and now I have some time to document everything that has happened.

My name is Derrick Spears. I lived in Norman, Ok when the crisis started. I call it a crisis, because that what all the talking heads on the TV called it. At first it wasn’t that bad, a new flu bug that was making some people sick. No reports of death and definitely no reports of un-death. Then it happened, the virus mutated. We know exactly where it started. It happened in an Oklahoma City hospital. A man, terminally ill with cancer contracted the flu virus. Somehow the chemotherapy along with the fact that the man was dying quickly gave the virus the push to adapt, it mutated and what happened after that changed the face of the world forever. I wonder sometimes if the man, his name was John Wilkins, had any idea the horrors that were happening in his body.

He died at 12:09 PM on March 20, 2012. Almost instantly the 12:09 virus went to work. (12:09 was the name given to the mutated virus courtesy of Fox News.) John lost his fight with the cancer, and the nurses were busy removing various machines from the man so he could be moved to the morgue. A nurse name Janet (last name lost) was leaning over the recently deceased man to remove a needle from his arm when John reanimated. In an instant he had opened his eyes, and had taken a chunk out of the nurse’s cheek. This was the first bite, the first transfer of the virus. How I wish it had of been stopped there. John was restrained by the other nurses, and Janet was taken to another room to have her wounds treated. The doctors simply thought that an error had occurred, that John hadn’t died, and simply suffered a stroke which caused him to become violent. They restrained him and tried to take some vital measurements. In the mean time, Janet had been sent home to recover from her wounds. Little did they know that the only chance of stopping the virus from spreading had walked out the door with Janet.
I later found out that Janet actually lived just a few blocks away from me. I discovered this on my way home from work. As I pulled into my neighborhood I was blocked by a CDC (Center for Disease Control) truck. The neighborhood had been quarantined while they searched for the nurse. I waited in my car for about an hour talking with a police officer that was helping to block the street. I heard the call come in on the radio ordering the search of the nurse called off. They had found her car in South Oklahoma City. I went home thinking that maybe she was just really sick with the flu, and they were trying to stop it from spreading more then the flu already had.
I woke up the next day and since it was a Sunday, I intended on just being lazy at home, but Chelsea (my girlfriend) had to go finish some stuff at work. I threw on some clothes and we left, the streets were pretty empty but I just attributed that to being Sunday. It was only a couple miles to our work, so we got there pretty fast, only to find the parking lot empty and the doors locked. We worked at a call center that operates 24 hours a day. Neither of us had ever seen it closed in the 3 years we worked there. It not being super important we decided to just go home and relax. On our way out of our office addition was when we noticed that something wasn’t right. Not only was there no traffic, but all of the buildings in the addition were closed too. I tried calling my boss on my cell phone to see exactly what was going on, but my phone went to a recorded messages saying “per order of the President of the United States all communication devices have been suspended in this area”.
Needless to say, we were both starting to get a little freaked out. We realized that not only was there very little traffic; there was none, not a single car on the road. In a building panic I started to drive home. I had made it about half way when an army transport blocked off the street in front of us. We were ordered at gunpoint to vacate our vehicle. After being thrown to the ground, handcuffed, and placed in a troop carrier I was told that the entire area was under Martial Law. We had violated it by being outside our home. I asked why my cell phone wasn’t working, and why Martial Law had been declared. One of the soldiers called me an idiot and asked me where I had been. He informed me that the flu virus had mutated, and that it had the effect of animating corpses. At which point another soldier joined in “Animated corpses my ass, we all know what those things are, just say it, Zombies”. I thought he was joking, so again, I asked, why my phone wasn’t working. I was informed that the president had ordered all communications in the area cut so that it wouldn’t induce panic outside the area. No phones, no internet. Why I asked? “Didn’t you just fucking hear him”? Another soldier added. “Zombies everywhere man”. Zombies like Dawn of the Dead zombies I asked? “I fucking wish” he said. I started to ask another question when the transport truck came to an abrupt stop. We were told to get off the truck. “Why can’t we just stay with you guys?” “We are under strict orders to only assist civilians to shelter. Under no circumstances are we to in any way endanger that, and having you guys with us would put that in jeopardy.” “What are we supposed to do then?” “Lock your doors” he said as the truck pulled away.
We were both in a state of shock, standing there in front of our house, watching the army transport drive away. When the truck disappeared around the corner, it was enough to put me into motion, I grabbed Chelsea and we went inside. Chelsea was still in shock, and wouldn’t even talk to me. She was just sitting there, crying, trying to adjust to this new warped world. I did my best to comfort her, and she fell asleep about 20 minutes later. It was at this point I snuck into the living room and turned on the TV. I tuned into CNN, and all they were talking about was a power black out impacting the entire state of Oklahoma. They said that due to the power outage all phones were out, and that it was expected to be fixed within the next couple of days. “Bullshit” I thought to myself, and turned it to the local news, only there wasn’t any local news on the usual channel, it was just a splash screen declaring technical difficulties. I quickly checked another local station, and that was when I saw my first zombie. There on the screen, gorging on someone, right in front of the camera. At first I couldn’t believe my eyes, it looked like a normal man, sitting there eating another person.
The human mind can’t adapt to that sort of thing quickly. I thought that I would react fast, be ready for anything after all the movies I watched and books I had read on the subject. Instead I sat there, terrified, trying to make sense of what I was seeing on the screen. The zombie seriously looked like an everyday Joe. After a minute I noticed a chunk of skin missing from his leg. Why that of all things woke me up I’ll never know, but instantly I started vomiting violently. I thought I was going to die right there on the living room floor. I couldn’t stop vomiting long enough to even get any air, but after a few minutes I laid back on the floor exhausted and was able to catch my breath.

Chapter Two -->