The Mike Beem Chronicles: 6 Tales of Survival, Hope, and The Zombie Apocalypse

by Anthony Renfro

  The Mike Beem Chronicles

  Anthony Renfro

  atothewr publications

  This is a work of fiction. I hold the necessary copyrights.

  This book was produced using Pressbooks.com.

  Contents

  Dedication

  A Zombie Thanksgiving

  A Zombie Christmas

  A Zombie New Year's Eve

  Chapter 1: Becky's Story

  Chapter 2: Joe's Story

  Chapter 3: Conclusion

  A Zombie Christmas 2

  Flesh for the Zombies

  Chapter 1: Disorder

  Chapter 2: Redemption

  Chapter 3: A Week Later

  Zombie Beach

  Part 1: Mike and Captain

  Part 2: Mike and Myrtle Beach

  About the Author

  Dedication

  Thank you to the Lord for the talent you’ve given me.

  Thanks Marty and Laura for your tireless Editing Efforts.

  Thank you to my family and friends for supporting me.

  Thank you Sherry, Joy, Emily, and Kim for keeping me writing.

  Thank you to all of those who read, like, and enjoy my work.

  Cover Design by James, GoOnWrite.com.

  A Zombie Thanksgiving

  Dawn stopped at the edge of the parking lot. What she saw in front of her was an apocalyptic nightmare. It was a picture of mass panic frozen in a time of chaos.

  The parking lot looked like a war zone–cars burned to metal bodies, cars crashed together, cars turned over, shopping carts everywhere and in all kinds of positions, (food and supplies in these carts long since looted), and bodies, lots and lots of dead bodies. Most of them had been laying out here rotting in the hot sun for far too long, and they were now decayed and gooey, slipping back into the Earth one second at a time.

  She closed her eyes, held the gold cross on a chain around her neck, prayed, and then crossed the parking lot.

  She stopped when she reached the double doors that led into the grocery store. Sunlight gleamed off what was left of the glass in the frame, shards on the ground twinkled like stars. Two zombies shuffled out of the store, heading in her tasty direction. Dead things. Rotten things. Been walking around for a long time now as a corpse things. A couple of quick pops of her gun and both of them went down hard. Perfect, clean, head shots. Blood splattered ground.

  Dawn looked to her left and right, back to the store in front of her, and then she turned around to make sure nothing was behind her. No other zombies shuffled about in the late fall heat, at least not from where she was standing; but there was a man, she did see a man, coming across the parking lot towards her. He stood about medium height, not too pudgy, not too thin. He had to be about 40 years old, she thought, as he put his hands up to show he wasn’t a threat.

  “Who are you?” She asked, as she aimed her gun at him.

  The guy looked down at her gun with the silencer on it, pointed directly at his gut. A nasty shot that would not end him instantly. “My name’s Mike, Mike Beem. You?”

  “Dawn Sprig,” she replied, and paused. “Have you been following me?”

  “I haven’t, just happened to see you crossing the parking lot. Thought I would walk over and see if you needed any help.”

  “I’m fine.” She wasn’t, because she was terrified of being out here on her own without her boyfriend. So, she faked it the best she could. “Just need to do a little shopping. I hope my credit is still good,” she replied, smiling, hoping to ease the tension.

  “Store’s probably picked over.”

  “Probably, but there might be something left for the Thanksgiving Holiday,” she replied, lowering her weapon.

  “I’m stuck on Christmas.”

  “Any luck?”

  “Some.” He paused. “You sure you don’t want me to go in with you? I can help if the store is overrun. Always nice to have back up.”

  She wanted to say yes, she really did, but even though she had lowered her gun, stranger danger still popped into her mind when she looked at him. He might seem like a nice guy out here, but in there, in the dark, he could be someone totally different. “I’d rather go it alone. If you don’t mind? I’m better that way. No offense.”

  “None taken. I Understand.”

  “Thanks, though, for the offer.”

  “Sure. Good luck and Happy Thanksgiving.”

  “You too, Mike.”

  He made his way out of the parking lot, and Dawn took another quick scan. No zombies about, just Mike evaporating into the distance. She turned back to the store, steadied her nerves, and turned on her light (this light was on a strap that ran around her head, so she could keep her hands free). She made sure her weapons were ready to do the job they were meant to do, knife in place and gun ready to fire. She started to walk, ever so slightly, crunching on broken glass, moving from the light into the dark.

  The smell inside the store wasn’t pleasant. All kinds of putrid things in a state of decay mingled and danced together in the non-air-conditioned air. Those smells were having a nice party in this tight enclosed airless space. Dawn tried to hold her breath and not breathe in too much of it, as she stopped just inside the double doors. She kneeled down in front of two bodies that were dead, flat, and squished. These bodies (elderly man and woman) looked like they had fallen down and nobody had bothered to help them up as the crowd trampled over them in a mad rush for supplies. She said a prayer for them, and then stood up. That’s when she heard it. It was a clicking sound, silent electronic keys being punched over and over again, hard to hear unless you were inside the store. She turned her light in the direction of that sound.

  Standing at one of the cash registers was a zombie, still dressed in her pink and grey “County Supermarket” uniform, partially eaten, name tag askew. Most of her face was gone, and she had huge chunks of flesh taken out of her neck and arms. She was still doing her job, punching keys on the register and scanning a can over and over again across a silent sensor. She didn’t even notice Dawn, as Dawn stood there smiling at the absurdity. The light on Dawn’s head also showed a dead body lying over the conveyor belt, a can of something in his hand. A can of something he would never need. Dawn wondered if this guy was one of the tramplers. Stepping on that elderly couple at the front of the store, ignoring the pleas of the two dying underneath the charging crowd. If he was one of those tramplers, then what good had it done him to ignore them? His life was just as wasted as those two flattened corpses.

  Dawn raised her gun, and the zombie cashier stopped for a moment. They locked eyes, but the zombie didn’t charge.

  “Go in peace,” Dawn replied, as the gun popped.

  The zombie’s head exploded in a shower of blood that drenched the cash register, and then she fell to the floor in a heap with the can of peaches still held tight in her hand. Her undead cashier days were over.

  Just to be safe, Dawn stepped up to the man lying over the conveyor belt. A soft pop from the gun, and the man’s lifeless head exploded in cold grey dust.

  Dawn stood there a moment, surveyed with her ears, listening for shuffling, listening for anything that disturbed the peace and quiet. She heard something. It was faint, coming from the rear of the store. She would have to keep her wits about her, as she tried to find food that was still edible for a Thanksgiving feast.

  She stepped past the dead man lying over the conveyor belt, and paused in front of the candy section, which hadn’t been looted. Dawn grabbed a bag of hard candies and ripped it open. She start
ed to munch on the rainbow of flavor, as she slung her backpack off her back and dropped it onto the conveyor belt. She unzipped the big front pocket, opened it wide, and emptied the candy shelf into it–making sure to get only candy that wouldn’t melt.

  Dawn finished up her candy treat, took a pause, reloaded her gun, and gulped down a bottle of water. When she felt rested, she zipped up the big front pocket on her backpack and slung the bag onto her back.

  “Well, let’s hope this store has what I’m looking for,” she replied to herself, as she started walking, gun forward, light splashing across the dark store, eyes darting down each aisle, looking for food, looking for zombies in the dark; and it was dark. The spotlight in front of her and the late afternoon light coming in from the front of the store barely pierced the blackness.

  The inside of the store, she noticed, had the same result as the parking lot. It looked like a mob of animals had just bulldozed its way through, knocking over shelves, people, carts, busting out the glass in the frozen food sections. Dead bodies were scattered everywhere. Most of them looked like they had died fighting for supplies or fending off zombies. She gave each dead body she found a good ole knife to the brain just to make sure that dead body wouldn’t get up and come after her.

  After exploring for a few minutes, Dawn stopped to take a sip of water when she found a shelf with a couple of cans of cranberries on it. She took off her back pack and dropped it onto the floor. She kneeled down, opened it up, and put a can of cranberries into it beside the sweet potatoes, the box of stuffing, the oyster crackers and canned yams she had found earlier that day.

  She paused when she heard the shuffling again. Too close for comfort. However many zombies that were still left in the store were definitely on to her. They could sense her warm presence, and they were hungry for it.

  Dawn scanned the area she was now in, back of the store, near the once bustling fresh meat section, meat that was now rancid and rotten. She noticed something, as she squatted there, the smell of rancid meat seemed to be moving closer to her somehow. How a smell could move in her direction she wasn’t sure. There was no breeze in the store to push it. The air was dead and calm.

  She zipped up her bag, stood up, and hoisted the bag onto her back. She grunted a bit from the weight when it landed on her shoulders. It wasn’t so heavy that she couldn’t run or walk with it on, but she was approaching her weight limit.

  Dawn looked up the aisle, light splashing on empty shelves, and an empty store. Seeing nothing moving, she turned around, and the smell of rancid meat engulfed her, wrapped her in its vomit-inducing embrace. The thing causing the smell was a zombie, and he was wearing a butcher’s outfit with all kinds of rotten body parts stuffed into the pockets of his butcher’s coat. He had wrapped intestines around his neck like a chain, and his meat cleaver was held high, ready to chop, chop, chop.

  The meat cleaver swung downward causing Dawn to drop her gun, as she moved out of its way. The cleaver clanged down into a nearby shelf with a loud bang, as the gun bounced on the floor and rattled off into the darkness. She retrieved her knife as the zombie grabbed her with his free hand. He decided not to chop anymore as he lunged towards her. He was ready to get some flesh between his teeth, and the meat cleaver wouldn’t help him with that. Dawn could smell the rotten odor on his breath, which smelled like week old dead flesh, as he went in for the fatal bite. Somehow, heavy as he was, she managed to push him back; and then with all her eighteen-year-old might, managed to jam the sharp blade into its head. The zombie quickly fell to the floor.

  She was about to reach down for her blade when she heard shuffling behind her. She turned around and two more zombies were coming towards her, spotlighted by the light on her head. One was in a shirt and a tie, probably the former manager, BOB was the name on his name tag; and he looked like a Bob. The other was dressed like a store employee somewhere in the late teenage years. Dawn looked down at the floor, searching frantically for her gun, and found it. She leaned over, heavy bag on her back nearly tipping her forward, and grabbed it. She yanked the gun up with her right hand, and steadied it with her left. Two silent shots, two flashes of red fire, and two heads exploded when the bullet met their brains. Their roaming time was done.

  Dawn stood there, and tried not to give in to the part of her that screamed “I’m a frustrated and scared little girl that only wants her mommy;” but she couldn’t help it. She gave in to it; and she cried, cried until she had no more tears to give, till she was rung out like an empty sponge. When she was finished, she felt better, and decided to focus, to turn her zombie instincts on. There were no sounds of shuffling or any sounds for that matter. The store and the world outside were as silent and dead as the bodies that lay all around her.

  She wiped away the tears on her cheeks, retrieved her blade, cleaned it, and stored it away. She then decided to see if there was a place in the back to sleep off the night. The shadows were growing thick; and it was almost too late to be outside, better to stay inside until the morning.

  She walked over to the double doors that led into the back of the store. She stood there a moment and made sure her gun was in a “ready to shoot on a moment’s notice” position. It was, so she proceeded forward.

  Dawn stopped on the other side, and shined her light across the back of the store, eyes looking the place over. All around her was destruction. The horde that had descended on this place hadn’t stopped at the parking lot or the front of the store. They had proceeded to this area as well, ransacking the place like a pack of wild animals.

  As she stood there, Dawn could see that day in her head, the first day of the invasion, the day the world knew a Zombie Apocalypse wasn’t just a horror genre or a joke or something you watched weekly on AMC. This was the real deal, and it was happening now. She could see the trucks and cars backed up to the loading bay doors, people hauling out supplies, pushing, shoving, screaming, fighting to maintain that last little bit of life still left in the world. Most of them wouldn’t survive that day or that week or maybe that month, but as they scrambled for supplies they still had hope, hope that maybe they would be okay. That was enough to keep them going even as the world they knew fell apart around them.

  She pushed the thoughts away, and walked over to the small door that employees and truckers used to use to enter the building. It was closed, but it had an electronic lock, which meant without power it wasn’t locked. She found a couple of non-broken pallets and leaned them against this door. Probably not enough to hold back a hungry zombie or a looter, but if they fell over the sound would at least alert her.

  She dusted off her hands, and walked over to one of the loading bays, the only one with the door pushed up. She stood there, and looked out on the lot behind the building. There were two pickup trucks sitting silent and alone, smashed together in a head on collision. Supplies littered the ground. There were no bodies to be seen, which was a relief. She had seen enough people in death’s embrace to last her a lifetime, bout time she got a break.

  While she stood there, she breathed in the fresh November air and scanned her eyes across the trees filled with dying color. She saw a zombie shuffle around the corner of the building dressed in fatigues, looking battle ready. There were no other shufflers with him.

  She aimed, “Go in peace,” and fired.

  The silencer on the gun poofed quietly. Another perfect head shot. The zombie fell over dead. His shuffling days were done.

  Dawn turned away, and decided to pick through the back of the store the best she could, stabbing the heads of the dead bodies that remained while she worked. It was tough going, but amongst the broken pallets, the turned-over shelves, the crushed and broken supplies, she managed to find several cans of green beans, oyster crackers, chips, water, turkey jerky, several boxes of dried mashed potatoes and mac and cheese. More to choose from back here than upfront, which was good, but still not enough. She didn’t just want this feast to work, she wanted it to be grand, like the ones she had growing up. It may s
ound absurd to most folks, in a time like this, worrying about something like this; but a Thanksgiving meal meant everything to her. She had to have it, and she wasn’t going to give up until she did.

  Dawn slipped her bag off her back, and kneeled down on the floor. She opened it, and found room for a can of green beans, the chips, turkey jerky, a box of mac and cheese, and a box of dried mashed potatoes.

  With her bag now fat and heavy, she decided to call it a day. She got up onto her feet, grunted at the weight of the bag on her shoulders, and then made her way towards the break room, listening for sounds of shuffling, listening for anything that didn’t sound normal. The world at large was still silent; and she was glad for that.

  At the break room door, she leaned her head against the closed piece of fake wood. No sounds coming from inside the sealed up space. She found the door handle and turned it. No lock, the door swung open into pitch black. She gripped her gun tight, aimed it forward, and stepped into the room.

  What she found was a typical break room. Stuff on the walls showing schedules, safety tips, posters full of encouragement (“Hang in there baby”), minimum wage earnings, a time clock, and on and on it went. There were two tables, multiple chairs, two dead vending machines, one with warm soda and water, and the other with processed snacks. Both machines were busted open, robbed of their precious delicious insides.

  She saw an opening in the wall next to these vending machines. It was another door, and it was open. She stepped over to it, and a set of stairs ascended in front of her. Dawn decided to climb, ever so quietly to the top.

  When Dawn reached the summit, she stopped. She was now standing on a landing in front of a closed door–no sounds of movement behind this door. She looked behind her, nothing but darkness, and nothing coming up out of that darkness to get her. The place was still silent. Feeling safe and secure, she turned the door handle (which also wasn’t locked), and entered the room.