Z Notes | Book 1 | Z Notes

by Lilly,Shawn L.

  Frank watched as Matt peeked over the edge of the metal wall and heard the crash and scratching on the other side intensified more and more. Matt was looking over, and when the first slam hit on the side, he saw his friend’s head shoot back and slam into the back lid knocking him out cold. His body dropped down and lay on some rotten trash bags. On the other side of the metal wall, the dogs were going ape shit.

  Frank could hear them trying their best to jump over the lid and get inside to have themselves a good meal. Frank couldn’t feel anything and was watching the goings-on, as if it was a bad movie going very wrong for the people acting in it.

  Frank could hear the dogs and see his best friend lying there dead with his mouth half open. Then something snapped inside, and Frank started looking around the trash for something to toss.

  Deep inside one of the bags he had dug open was what appeared to be some whole chickens. But he couldn’t call them chickens now, more like maggot food. Frank reached in and grabbed a whole of it and started gagging. The feel was soft and slimy. The maggot moved around his hand trying to escape his grasp.

  Frank held his breath and gave it a huge heave up and over the metal wall. There was a “slap” as it hit something and sounds of water. It must have fallen apart or rolled into a puddle.

  The pounding and scratching on the metal stopped instantly and was followed by running and fighting over the spoiled meat carcass. Frank stood up and took a look real quick to see what he was going to have to deal with on the other side of his safety.

  Eating the meat were two dogs alright, but they were not living dogs. Zombie, undead mutts were attacking the maggot food like it was their last meal.

  Frank looked back and grabbed a couple of small bags of trash and tossed them out as well. The dog watched them hit and gave them a sniff before tearing into them to see what waited inside as well. Now that they were occupied, Frank reached down and smacked Matt in the face softly a couple of times. Matt gave a groan, but it was silenced by the covering of his mouth by Frank’s hand.

  Matt was seeing stars and had a nasty headache now but knew when to be quiet if his buddy said so. But he had seemed to have forgotten where he was at for a time being. But it came back fast, and he searched around for the fallen bat. With Frank moving bags, the bat was covered up, and it took some time to find its whereabouts. Once found Matt used it to stand up again and watched the scene of the zombie dogs ripping into the trash bags.

  Matt’s head was spinning still, but he knew he had only minutes to get up and over and away before their focus fell back on the dumpster and on them once more.

  Matt handed the bat to Frank, who in turn took it and propped it up on his shoulder, like a baseball player posing for a picture. Matt reached for his backpack and untied the machete on the back and held it in his right hand and his bag in his left. Lifting himself up he leaned over and laid the bag on the ground and looked up quick to see if they heard his movements. But the zom-dogs were more interested in the trash still.

  Now with a little help from Frank, Matt slowly climbed up and over the sidewall and dropped to the ground with a light thud. Matt froze and listened. The alley was all quiet, and Matt knew that was a bad sign altogether. Lifting his head he could see the zom-dogs had stopped their fighting from over a trash bag to of who would eat the tasty, juicy long pig standing nearly ten feet away from them.

  Bracing himself he planted his feet apart and waited for the first lunge and attack. The zom-dogs walked slowly toward Matt and growled at him with each step. Once they were close enough, they broke apart and began to circle their prey snapping as they walked around.

  Matt watched them as best as he could, but watching two dogs zombiefied was scarier than being within short distance of a sprinter zombie.

  It happened so fast Matt nearly didn’t see the movement. The one dog that circled up behind him waited till he wasn’t looking and lunged close enough to Matt he could feel its breath on his back arm and could almost swear its teeth graced his elbow.

  Matt crouched low and swung his blade as if it was a normal reflex he had done his whole life. The blade caught the dog as it was trying to hop back to its safe zone.

  The machete slammed into its still open jaw and took off the top half of its head. But the other dog took this as its opportunity to surprise attack while Matt’s blade was nowhere able to counter its own attack. Matt turned his head to see the other dog lunge, and he knew then he had messed up bad and was now going to pay for his mistake. Dropping his butt he lifted his arms to try and at least fend of the dog. But as soon as he closed his eyes and fell, a thud and a slam into the pavement sounded out. It was also followed by other thuds till the thud itself sounded sloppy and wet.

  Matt opened one eye to see Frank standing close by swing his bat down over the dog over and over again. The zom-dog looked almost better than it did before Frank’s assault, thought Matt. Matt stood up and watched as his vision blurred and the world began to spin. The bump on the head must have given him a concussion or something.

  Matt gave all he had to stand up, and his legs gave out from under him. But his limp body never found ground, only the helping hands of his friend, Frank.

  Frank seeing his buddy about to fall dropped his bloody bat and jumped up to support him before he collapsed onto the concrete. Walking him over to the wall, he leaned him up against it and snapped his finger in front of his face.

  “Matt?” said Frank, snapping in front of his face.

  Matt swatted Frank’s hand away and stood up the best he could. Frank supported his arm while he got up but tossed a look around whenever he thought he heard something.

  “It’s time to get out of here, Matt,” said Frank, swinging his buddy’s arm over his neck. “Sun won’t be up for much longer.”

  Frank marched Matt to the end of the alley and looked around a bit. The coast seemed clear, and so he went back and picked up Matt and walked him out. As they walked past abandoned cars, the shadows grew longer. Frank felt the drop of temperature and looked up. The sun was about to fall out of sight, and they were in need of a shelter before it went dark.

  Walking around in the dark was like asking to be eaten. With no streetlights or any illumination whatsoever, one wouldn’t be able to see very far in front of oneself. In the passing days the wind had picked up, and the cold breeze was coming with it. Fall was almost over and winter was coming.

  Winter, thought Frank as he walked almost carrying Matt. What did that mean for them? Would they be able to find enough food? What about keeping warm and finding some place to hold up before it snowed and ice set in? There were too many questions to answer and too many outcomes, some good and some bad to even think about. But all he knew was right now he had to get Matt some place warm and check him out.

  Carrying Matt was taking its toll on Frank. Perspiration began, and he started to get heavily winded. His body couldn’t even feel the cold air of night creeping in on them. Matt had seemed to have just about given up trying to walk, so Frank was almost dragging him alongside him.

  “You’re lucky I used to work out,” said Frank, looking over at Matt.

  “Watching a girl through a window outside a gym isn’t working out,” replied Matt in a low mumble.

  Frank smiled and chuckled some. “At least your humor wasn’t knocked out of you,” Frank pointed out.

  On the verge of giving in, Frank spotted a turned-over truck-trailer on the road just ahead of them. Frank took a deep breath and regained a second wind and took off toward it as fast as he could. It took longer than he thought it would to cover that little bit of distance to the trailer. Frank set Matt down in the grass and walked over to the truck. Grabbing the handles, he went to pull them open and stopped. Frank was in such a hurry he forgot to do the check. He had seen too many people die in the past six months not doing the check.

  Reaching up Frank banged on the back of the truck a couple of times and waited and banged some more and stopped and listened. No noise came fro
m within the bed of the trailer. Satisfied, Frank lifted the handles and pulled the doors open. Inside were boxes galore. There wasn’t much room, so Frank climb up inside and started grabbing boxes. He opened the first box he grabbed to see what was inside. Inside was a good amount of toys. He figured it wasn’t food. Setting in a trailer for six months would have spoiled the food and leave a smell. Upon opening the door, no odor came to him. But that didn’t mean it might not have been canned foods.

  With enough boxes moved, Frank hopped down on the ground. His feet slammed into the pavement, and the sound seemed to echo around him. He froze upon the landing and listened once again for any movement. The sun was almost down, and the darkness was here for ten hours or so. With the light fading so fast, he was having trouble seeing very far, and his line of sight was growing shorter each second that passed. Wasting no time Frank walked over and grabbed Matt and pulled him up on his feet and lifted him half on the floor of the trailer. Reaching down he grabbed his legs and gave them a good heave and tossed them on in as well. Climbing in behind his limp friend, he reached back and pulled the doors shut.

  The doors made a whining sound as they closed back, but they wouldn’t lock shut from the inside. Besides, once the door closed shut, the little light they had vanished completely, and it was darker in the trailer than it was outside.

  Nighttime, when the sun went down and the unsettling dark abyss slid across the skies, used to be a time for parties and people to go clubbing and drinking, real all-out fun all night. But now it was a time for hiding and staying motionless.

  With the streetlights absent and porch lamps out everywhere you turned, it was like walking around with your eyes close. If you’re lucky, you would get a full moon to help give off light so you could see your surroundings. But let it be a new moon, and you was a good as dead meat walking.

  It seemed the dead had what appeared to be night vision or something because they seemed to find anyone who traveled at night or just able to smell life, sweat, or determination to survive.

  Now with the sun set and the sky lit from the full moon, the streets were beginning to fill up with walkers and other dead things that roamed around. Not far from the new nightlife was a truck-trailer that seemed to have driven off into a ditch. Inside were two young men trying to survive the night.

  “Matt, stay awake,” said Frank. “I can’t let you sleep right now. You need to stay awake for me. I need you too.”

  Frank was standing just over his wounded friend digging into boxes looking for something he could use.

  The boxes were filled with toys for a department store or something like it and didn’t make it to their destination. Frank unable to see was just ripping into box after box trying to locate something useful inside.

  “Come on,” Frank talked to himself. “There has to be something here I can use, just one thing I can…get it.”

  Frank had hit a button on some small, long, round toy, and the end lit up the inside of the trailer. Frank smiled and looked down at his hand and what he had found. It looked to be a flashlight, but on the top was a Mickey Mouse head. It was kind of childish, but any kind of light right now would do for what he was about to do next.

  Now with some light, he was going through boxes twice as fast, looking for his next tool he would need. He knew he needed to hurry because it was getting darker and the light from the children’s flashlight was shining through the cracks of the trailer door.

  Matt seemed to be in and out of consciousness when Frank took a second look at him and tried to arouse him. In going into his like one hundredth box, he felt like he found what he wanted about half way into his search.

  It was a jump rope and a nice long one from the looks of it. Frank laid his Mickey Mouse light down so he could use two hands to pull out the rope. It seemed to be about fifteen or twenty feet long. Walking toward the doors of the trailer, Frank began tying the doors together and pulling them close more tightly, because they only locked from the outside and not the inside. So if he was going to get any sleep tonight, he would have to find a way to secure the door from the inside, either from the dead trying to get in at them or the living trying to hide out in the same place and giving them away to the dead so they could surround the truck.

  With the door closed and the boxes salvage hunt at an end, he could finally set down and check on his friend and see how he was doing. Matt was lying there looking up at the ceiling of the trailer as if he was dreaming of something.

  “So, Matt, how do you feel?” asked Frank, covering the Mickey Mouse light with a shirt he took out of his bag to help dim the light some.

  Matt didn’t answer at first. He just lay there looking off in space. Then Matt blinked a couple of times and looked over at him. “My head hurts real badly, but the dizziness is gone, but I’m still tired.”

  Frank looked in his bag for his headache pills. Frank figured if the world was ending and there were no more doctors and you got a fever, then you might need some pills to help kill a fever some till someone with training was found or you got better or died.

  Frank popped two Advil in his hand and handed them to Matt. Matt took them and looked up at Frank. “What? No water?”

  Frank smiled and reached back into his bag and pulled out his canteen and gave it a shake. The canteen was bone-dry, and he had no other liquids to give him.

  “Sorry, buddy. I’m all out of water. But if you like, I can pee in it for you. The guy that was on TV said you could drink human pee if you had no other choice of liquid around you.”

  Matt heard all this and looked over and just glared at him and tossed the pills in his mouth. With the pills in his mouth, he bit down and crushed them up and swallowed them the best he could. Once they were down, he set up with Frank’s help and smacked his mouth a couple of times to get the saliva back in there and help swallow anything else that might be left he didn’t get down.

  “No water, huh?” said Matt. “That’s not like you to run dry on me. Besides I don’t care what the guy on TV does or did. You will not be peeing in a cup for me to drink or on me at all, R. Kelly.”

  Frank smiled and returned his bottle of pills back to the bag and zipped it up. Matt was now looking around from his sitting spot.

  “You went through all the boxes in here?” asked Matt, still looking around.

  “A good amount I did. They’re all toys so far,” replied Frank.

  Matt frowned and said “Pity” and leaned back down and rested his head on a box.

  Frank reached up and grabbed a stuffed animal and shoved it under his head for comfort.

  “Thanks, Mommy” was Matt’s reply for doing so.

  Frank went to stand and looked back down at Matt.

  “Why did you say pity? This is a toy truck; I’d think you would be in heaven right now in here.”

  Matt looked up at him. “I was hoping for maybe a novelty truck. I’m in a bit of pain, and after a good lay, it seems to help me out.” With that he smiled and closed his eyes.

  Frank shook his head and said back to his comment, “Why didn’t you say so? We could always go back to that backyard with a pool. That screamer I killed was stacked nice, and as she’s half naked, you might not have trouble having her take off the other half.”

  “She was, wasn’t she? You think if I used protection on her I could save myself from turning?” With that Matt smiled and rolled over.

  Frank smiled and replied “Sick ass” and made his own bed and turned off his Mickey Mouse light.

  Sleep didn’t come to the young men easy that night. As they lay there, the sounds of moaning and things being knocked over came every few seconds. On some occasions something would bump into the truck, and it would shake it. But nothing from that seemed to get any worse. With the door tied shut and the light off, Frank and Matt could only lie there and listen to the nightlife just on the other side of the wall. Matt before he finally dozed off thought to himself, I guess the freaks really do come out at night.

  Bacon and Eg
gs, Anyone

  Night—it’s a time for sleep and relaxing from working all day in the hot sun. That’s unless you work the graveyard shift.

  Watching the sun go down and the moon rise up and awakening of the stars with their constellations. But for Matt and Frank, there were no stars or relaxing going on. There wasn’t much sleep going on either in a nice comfortable bed.

  No, their beds were made of hard toys and pillows of stuffed animals. They laid some broken-down boxes over the toys so not to feel their sharp edges. In addition to rough beds and the humid environment they found themselves in, they were only able to sleep bits of time because of the noise coming from the outside of the metal wall of the truck.

  There were no birds chirping or cats or dogs calling out. What were heard were the soft moans of the walking dead roaming around. Even with the door to the truck secured with a toy jump rope, Frank found himself getting up so often to check on its status making sure the knot didn’t slip. Matt would pretend to be asleep, but his headache hadn’t vanished completely yet and the moaning just aggravated the pain.

  But with all the new nightlife out there, they eventually had fallen asleep somehow, and morning had crept up on them. Frank was the first to awake. His clothes were damp, and he could feel the heat gathering in their nighttime hot box. Matt feeling something stir beside him woke up himself. His body hurt all over, and his clothes were just as wet as Frank’s.

  Matt pushed himself up to a sitting position and wiped his nasty hair out of his face with his hand. Frank was already working on the rope that kept the doors closed.

  “I thought that fall meant cooler temps?” asked Matt, sitting there watching Frank work at the knot.

  Frank looked back but kept his hands moving the whole time without looking at what he was doing. “Must be that global warming crap you’re always bitching about,” replied Frank. “Besides, how does your head feel?”