Document Z - Episode 1 Entry

For the Episode 1 prompt, click Here

Tim crouched low and slid across the backseat of the taxi, slowly popping the door open. As he stepped from the cab, a woman went running past him, shouting about the police and “monsters”. As she went flailing down the freeway, Tim turned his attention to the cab driver.

Blood coated the side of the taxi and the mans face and he moaned in a low voice. Tim eased him from the remains of his car window and laid him back in the seat. One eye was gone, likely forever, and the gash that ran the length of the mans face would need medical attention soon. Attention that Tim wasn't likely to be able to give him here.

Tim shook his head and reached in, snatching the key ring from the ignition. Feeling horribly exposed, he duck-walked to the rear of the cab quickly began trying keys, sighing when he hit the right one for the trunk on the third try. Snatching his ruck sack from the trunk, he finally stood and surveyed the scene around him.

It was chaos.

Along the highway, people were running blindly, crashing into one another in a desperate attempt to flee those who were attacking them. Tim saw the woman who had been screaming a few moments before bore down under the weight of seven or eight people. Tim couldn't see what they were doing to her but, since her screams had turned into wet, gargling sounds, he figured it wasn't a good idea to stick around 'til they finished. He swung his ruck sack on and and began scanning the area for somewhere to go that wasn't in a crowd of people who had suddenly lost their minds.

Beyond the highway, Tim could see little. To the north was the glass front of what he knew to be Lincoln College. To the south stretched rows of warehouses, the closest of which was lined with Tru-Value semi-trailers. Beyond that, smoke rose in the distance and the far off sounds of sirens blared. What the hell is going on? Tim thought as he decided to head south towards the warehouses. He still had to get to Lakewood.

Just then, a woman came towards him and, for a moment, Tim thought she was looking for help. Then he got a good look at her.

She looked in her 60's, with gray hair that hung matted and unkempt. Her skin was a blueish-gray, like someone that had been too long without sunlight. Her mouth was drawn in a sneer that would have been comic, had it not been for the blood-stained teeth. Her throat was a mangled mass, strips of flesh hanging from the gaping wound there like party streamers. Her fingers ended in ragged claws, the nails stained red and broken, some down to the quick. All this was contrasted by the clothes she wore, a fur coat that looked as though it was worth a small fortune, now dirty and stained with blood and chunks of something that Tim thought it best not to dwell on. Tim took an involuntary step back and said “Hey....” and then she was on him.

Tim was a master of hand to hand combat but this was nothing like a knife fight in Kabul or a classified mission in Tikrit. It was worse. He tried to hold her at arms length but, despite her advanced age, she was incredibly strong, her grip like iron and as cold as ice. She snapped her teeth at him like an animal. Tim slung her to the side and she went flying, crashing into the end of the taxi. There was a loud, snapping sound, like wood breaking. Tim took a step towards her and said, “Lady, what the fuck is your problem?”

The woman looked at him and moaned, the sound sending chills down Tim's spine. As she stood and came towards him, one of her arms now bent at an impossible angle, he threw a side kick at her that sent her sprawling once more. Tim glanced down and saw a broken beer bottle lying on the edge of the highway. He snatched it up and held it out, hardening his voice as he stated, “Look, lady, come at me again and I'm gonna have to really hurt you.” He might as well have been talking to a dog.

As she came within his reach, he drove forward and up, driving the bottle through what remained of her neck. Despite the wound already there, Tim expected her to stumble and fall, especially when he let go of the bottle neck and it remained lodged in her throat, like some obscene piece of jewelry. His expectations were dashed when she continued forward, the bottle choking off that horrible moan. He side stepped her grasp and plucked the bottle from her throat, stabbing towards her eye. The bottle sliced through her gray skin like butter and then slid further, far past the point it should have. Horrified, Tim could feel the bottle slicing past her skull (which seemed soft, like an infants) and into the brain. Abruptly the woman stopped and crumpled to the ground, another body in the expanding landscape around him that was beginning to look more like the wastelands of Iraq and Afghanistan than the 'burbs of northeastern Denver.

Tim turned, slinging his ruck sack on his back and sprinted towards the warehouse. He darted between the trailers and quickly pressed himself to the side of the building. He could see no doors here but there was a ladder leading to the roof not more than 25 feet from him. As he approached it, he saw a body lying in a pool of blood.

It looked as though the guy had been torn apart. A huge hole exposed his entire chest cavity and his entrails streamed from it like vines trying to escape a trellis. Swallowing hard, Tim looked closer and discovered that the cavity was almost empty, the internal organs gone. What the hell?, he thought.

It was then that Tim saw the tire-thumper laying just outside the blood. About a foot and a half long, it was shaped like a miniature baseball bat. Snatching it up, he quickly climbed the ladder. Kneeling so as to present a smaller profile against the sky, he scanned the horizon. He could see large columns of smoke to the north and south. From the west came the ever louder wails of sirens. To the east there were several black specs in the air and Tim could now hear the beat of distant helicopters. Moving to the other side of the building, he could see a large building with a lot of heavy equipment in a fenced lot. Tim lay flat and peered over the edge. Two large knots of people were in the street below him. Tim stared, trying to make sense of what he was seeing The scene below him was so surreal and discordant that it was nearly a full minute before he realized that they were EATING them.

Tim's brain danced around the “Z”word, his conscious mind refusing to admit what he was seeing.

Jet-lag and zombies.

Welcome home Tim.

Tim's view of street behind warehouse....