Free ZWD: King of an Empty City by Thomas Kroepfl

keep the chainsaw running without his finger on the trigger?” “How come the book could fly?” “Was the car out of gas?” The questions went on and on for probably a week. I thought I had her hooked on scary movies after that, but I couldn’t get her to watch any more. I couldn’t help making fun of her building a pillow fort on the couch and hiding her eyes behind her hands, as she lay curled up on the couch next to me under a blanket that night. Oh, that was a great night. That was normal.
     
                  When we came back from the camp at the Big Dam Bridge we found out Andy was dead. Jill was missing. Most of our neighbors were either killed by marauders or zombies. The barricades we’d erected did little good in keeping any of us safe. Like at the Big Dam Bridge, a couple of sawhorses, really, were not that effective.
 
                  We searched Andy and Jill’s house, trying to find some trace of where she’d been. There was nothing giving us a clue about anything. Bob Lester was one of our friends, he lived two doors down from us. He was still in his house. He was the one who gave us the news about Andy. Andy was bitten when the first wave of zombies came into the neighborhood. He was trying to break up a fight he thought was between two people, but one was a zombie. It turned and bit him. He wandered home and attacked Jill. Bob didn’t know what happened to Steve and Kate. He said he killed her one afternoon when he ran into her sneaking into the Safeway for food.  
    He wasn’t staying in town. Bob decided he was going to try to make it out of town. He thought if he could get to old Highway 25 on the other side of Conway, he was sure he could make it to Heber Springs, where he had family and a place on the lake where he could wait it all out. He was an old vet who had served at the end of Vietnam. He enjoyed the camping and solitude Heber Springs offered and spent many of his weekends there, so he was never really around us when we had the neighborhood parties. But during the week he was always around because he was retired. He was our neighborhood watch guy who knew everything going on. He told us who was left and where they were, and how a few didn’t answer their doors anymore. He said the hell with it and decided to go to Heber when he was delivering food and he’d found to Mrs. Wilson and was shot at through the window.
                   There were one or two people left in the neighborhood and they weren’t as friendly as Bob was. Like us they were scared. Unlike us, they weren’t seeking strength in numbers. It was hard to get people to come out of their homes. This was when we learned the rule of noise. DON’T MAKE ANY! We saw Bob off and then we went down the middle of the street yelling for people to come out of their homes. Nobody did, but zombies came out of the woodwork. We were on the run in no time. Sleeping wherever we could find a safe place like a PT Cruiser, breaking into houses looking for food.
    ZWD: King of an Empty City Chapter 07
     
    ZWD: Dec. 08.
    Topographical maps, survival books, gardening, and not one book on plant recognition. We may starve before the zombies get us. Time to go.
     
    Inside the library, the doors to the bathroom were these two-inch-thick hardwood doors with big deadbolt locks on them, thick and strong. We’d been in this building for days, and even though I knew it was empty I still went to the bathroom with a weapon in my hands. When I opened the door I was ready to swing the shovel at anything on the other side. I knew we were safe. I knew the noises I could barely hear out there were her bumping around, but I just couldn’t get comfortable.
                  For the last two days I’d been looking for a book on plant recognition. It was my goal to be able to spot a potato plant and say, “We should dig here!” I hadn’t found that book yet. Taking a break, I found her on the fourth floor