Free Remedy Z: Solo by Dan Yaeger Page B

bridge behind me and the horns started beeping, making things even more pressured. You could have cut the air with a knife. The inner city of Canberra where I had worked was going berserk and people were desperate to get the hell out. The cop gripped his head with one hand, grimaced and sniffed, waving his gun around erratically. I could see the disaster before it happened but the people in the car in front were just too compliant. I couldn’t get out of the way with the car in front of me as the three lanes were reduced down to two, courtesy of some concrete barricades. With that roadblock of sorts, I couldn’t get through, nor could the hundreds of others banking up behind me. The stress was unbearable as the fear of danger and being a link in the chain that was risking so many lives became apparent. I was part of the problem and I had to make way quickly. What had erupted in the city was nothing short of horror. We all had to have a chance to make it, a chance to live, fight and survive. 
    The car in front had a young couple in it and their fate ended up forging mine. The woman was in the passenger seat of their overheating car and was talking with the cop about something. She produced a cling-wrap bag of some Divine-laced meds which he snatched. He dragged her out of the vehicle, made her get on her knees with her hands on her head. Shamelessly, he consumed the stuff with Divine in it himself, shaking like the worst of addicts as he did so. This was the dose needed, the tipping point and in a few moments more, he would be a zombie. It would not be the last time I would see someone turn; far from it. 
    But being a zombie wasn't always cut and dry; there were those that went into a sort of instant vegetative state, others were like sharks on the attack and others were cold killing machines. Unfortunately, the cop was the "killer" archetype. He used his gun to shoot the woman, execution-style, and twitched violently. He then shot the driver. The young man slumped forwards and I could see the break-lights go off on his car. At the moment they weren’t the only lights that went out:  the cop was gone and so was my innocent hope that things would be OK. 
    The cop continued to shock; the horror-show did not fail. He proceeded to attack and eat the body of the woman without abandon. There was blood, the odd fountain of it, as I sat there a little stunned. But at that moment, being faced with absolute horror, my flight and fight reflexes had kicked in. “You’ve never looked back again, have you mate,” I almost felt sad at the thought.
    I drove forward at full acceleration and hit the car in front, rolling it forwards, off the bridge, and into a railing. Steam poured off and people behind me started screaming. The space made by the car was just enough to make way for my vehicle to get the hell out of there. I saw that cop feasting away, a mockery of his former self and his former duty to protect and serve. He had a new credo at that moment: kill, eat and spread. It had become my duty at that moment to deal with him. I reversed back into the car behind me with a bang, lined him up and drove into him, crushing him into the railing. The 9-mil pistol flew from his grasp and into the lake, below. That was one of many handguns that got away. Luck in acquiring handguns was just not with me. That was my first zombie kill and the situation, that horror, changed me. My sense of duty to self was paramount, but I knew I had to act to stop that cop from spreading his disease to those souls behind me. “Who ever said all humans are purely selfish?” I was still proud of my actions on that day. What faced me from then on continued in its horror but I had been forewarned and forearmed. Reflecting on that memory reminded how much the horrors of the zombie apocalypse had changed me. 
    The events at the bridge were a revelation; the old government, law and order, the military and society as I knew it were gone. It was every man for