Z Walkers: The Complete Collection

by Luke Shephard

  Taking advantage of the adrenaline rush, Collin took a running start and leapt from this roof to the neighboring one. His ankle rolled in impact, and he almost tumbled over the side of the slated rooftop.

  But he didn’t. His suicidal plan, one that wasn’t even properly thought out now that he considered it, had actually worked.

  He moved from roof to roof, leaving behind him the distracted freaks. A few stopped in the street every so often whenever he landed too hard, but the houses were close enough for him to hop from one to the next without making too big of a scene. Once he thought he was far enough away, he crawled down from roof to garage top, then into a backyard. From there, he hopped the fence, limping on his rolled ankle, and made his way into the grassy ravine.

  See ya later, suburbia.

  He raised his middle finger at the place as a parting salute before slipping into the trees, crouched low and eyes peeled for freaks. If he never saw another manicured lawn or freshly paved driveway, it would be too fucking soon.

  He had no idea this was just the beginning.

  *****

  Sara – Episode 2

  One hears all sorts of sounds working at a gym: grunts coming from the weight area, groans from the weigh-in scale, and pants from the treadmill. Screaming wasn’t an especially common sound. In fact, Sara had never heard screaming—multiple screams, actually—in the four years that she’d worked for Fit Fresh, and she’d had some pretty terrible clients. They’d been sour-faced and sullen, lazy and irritable, but never had any of her workouts produced screams.

  No one’s workout routine should make a client scream.

  So, one can imagine her horror when she heard them, all the screams of varying pitches and volumes, echoing from the main floor below her office. She jumped back from her clipboard, in the midst of scribbling in new weights and times for her 4-o’clock appointment—Mr. Lowdry, fifty-six, liked to look at her boobs.

  At first, she wondered if they were delighted screams. Her Fit Fresh location was in a well-off area of the city, and it wasn’t a rare to see celebrities and reality TV stars occasionally making an appearance when their personal trainers were out sick. Just last month she’d had to cancel her whole day to help a big name news anchor for that very reason: the woman was insanely in-shape for someone her age, so it wasn’t a complete loss.

  But the longer she listened, the more acutely aware she was that these weren’t screams of delight—they were screams of horror. Panic. Fear. Her palms moistened with cool sweat as she crept to her office door, peering out the small window and nibbling her lower lip.

  Was it a heist? The gym made a lot of money—enough to get her into a penthouse suite on the outskirts of the neighborhood on a personal trainer’s salary—but they didn’t keep much cash around. It was all electronic transactions. The company wasn’t involved in any political scandal either, nothing that would encourage masked gunmen to take the building hostage.

  But then again, what did those lunatics need to take over a building? Probably not much, given they had a screw loose somewhere up there.

  When the screams started to lose some of their luster, Sara grabbed her phone and crept out of her office, bending low and trying to stay out of sight. The second floor overlooked the first, and was usually lined with women using the dozens of ellipticals and bikes, while the first floor was more for weight training.

  The few gym-goers from the second floor seemed to have scattered before she did, and most of her co-workers’ offices were dark—they’d be on the floor, like she could have been. Swallowing hard, her throat dry, Sara made it to the edge of the stairs, ones with spotless glass railings, and it was there she saw the cause of all the noise.

  It was like there was a riot on the first floor. A bloody, violent riot. Her trembling hand covered her mouth, watching people rip each other apart. Many seemed to be trying to get to the main doors, but they were blocked by bloody-faced people, their hands outstretched and groping for contact.

  They all looked sick. They had to be—a woman had just pushed a teen down and dug her teeth into his cheek, his limbs flailing as he screamed. The receptionist—she’d just been hired two months ago—had climbed on top of a multi-purpose weight machine, shrieking as two red-faced attackers clung to the hem of her stretchy yoga pants.

  “Oh my god,” Sara breathed. Something clattered behind her, and she whirled around, eyes wide. An elderly woman who used the elliptical religiously five days a week had scrambled behind a garbage can—it looked like she was crying. They made eye contact, and Sara brought a finger to her lips, willing her to be quiet and stay out of sight. That familiar grey hair bobbed up and down, and she seemed to be trying to make herself as small as possible.

  Okay. Police. Now.

  She hoped that if people couldn’t get out of the building, they found safety in the lower levels. Below the main floor was a yoga studio, lockers, racquetball courts, and the entrance to the pool. Plenty of places to hide until the police arrived.

  Unfortunately, just as her shaking fingers started to dial the number on her sleek new cell phone, one of the blood-covered people from below started to climb the staircase. He did so a little awkwardly, like his limbs weren’t his own anymore, but when his gaze found her, Sara’s blood ran cold. It was like looking into the eyes of the Devil himself: uncaring, unfeeling—dead.

  In her haste to get up, she tripped over the heel of her trainers and stumbled back onto her butt. She whimpered and scrambled to her feet, hands so sweaty that she almost dropped her phone. While there was plenty of places to hide downstairs and beyond, the upper floor wasn’t much more than a lookout perch with all its bikes and ellipitcals—and staff offices. Rather than try to make a run for the emergency exit on the far side, Sara made a beeline for her office, imagining a locked door to be safer than an unknown stairwell.

  And she could practically hear that… man on her heels. Groaning, seething, panting, his heavy footfalls pounded in her ears as she ran. The door practically fell open when she plowed through it, and she slammed it shut as hard as she could, fumbling over the locks.

  Crouching in front of the window, she watched for signs of her follower, only to feel tears prickling her eyes when she realized he’d found a new target.

  Edna. That was her name. They’d laughed about something or other last week… The old woman kept pushing herself behind the metallic garbage can as the man encroached on her, joined by another limping figure from the first floor.

  She shook her head, biting down so hard on her lips that she tasted blood. Edna couldn’t die like that—everyone needed a fighting chance.

  So, against her better judgment, Sara unlocked the door and yanked it open.

  “Come here!” she called, beckoning the woman over. She could probably make it if she ran. “Come here! The door locks!”

  But she didn’t move. Edna sat there, waiting for death, and Sara slammed the door shut, knowing a lost cause she saw it. Flicking off the lights, she sank to the floor and crawled under her desk, hands over her ears, tears streaming down her face.

  And waited for the screaming to stop.

  ***

  Complete and utter silence in the gym was just as unnerving as the screaming. The only time her twenty-four-hour facilities were absolutely silent were between the hours of three and four in the morning: even night owls weren’t keen on working out during that hour. Otherwise, there was always some sort of sound—machines beeping, people chatting, music pumping. Sara had tuned out all the racket years ago when she found it hard to focus on a client session, but now, hidden beneath her desk, she wanted nothing more than some of those familiar sounds.

  It was so still that she could hear her ears ringing. Hours had crawled by, filled with shrieks and cries and pleas, and then it all stopped. Nothing had pressed up against her office window for a while now, and she’d quieted her own sobbing too.

  Inching out from under the desk, she crawled toward the door on shaky limbs and peered thro
ugh the window. Blood. Blood everywhere. No bodies, though she gagged when she saw a torn-off ear sitting by one of the nearby ellipticals.

  As secure as her office felt, she knew she couldn’t stay there forever. One of those… people had seen her hide in there—they were bound to come back for her sometime. So, she grabbed a fully loaded stapler, then opened the door as quietly as she could.

  The creaky hinges made her skin erupt in little bumps, but she pushed through, shuffling out and dropping to her knees. No need to make herself a bigger and more obvious target.

  Rather than heading for the stairs, she hurried across the room to the windows overlooking the parking lot below, crawling behind machines to stay hidden. It only took one quick peek to tell her that those people—those merciless, sick people—were loitering around outside. They moved with a similar limp as the ones inside had, hobbling between cars with a lifeless expression on their bloodstained faces.

  She ducked down with a whimper when one seemed to look toward her.

  “Sara?”

  Another squeal. She collapsed behind the elliptical, pressing her body against the wall and holding the stapler up as her only defense. However, she felt like she could let out a small breath when she found the source of the voice: Gary.

  Personal trainer extraordinaire, Gary Belman had started working here a year before she did, and yet he always talked like he had decades of experience over her. Unfortunately, as pompous (and attractive) as Sara found him, she had to admit he was a hard worker.

  And she’d never been happier to see him in all her life.

  “Gary,” she whispered, clambering out from behind her makeshift hiding space and throwing her arms around his burly shoulders. “Oh my god!”

  “Yeah, I… I know,” he murmured back, holding her to him. His deep, steady breathing had a welcome calming effect on her, and she gripped the back of his jacket. “Are you okay?”

  She pulled away and gave a strangled laugh, one hand falling to her hip while the other pushed through her hair. “Been better, Gary. Been better.”

  “Yeah, stupid question. Sorry.” They both kept their voices low, and Sara shot a wary look in the direction of the stairs. “Are you hurt?”

  “Physically, no,” she said, shaking her head. “Mentally…”

  “I’m with you there. What the hell is happening?”

  She took him by the hand and pulled him back to her office, too on edge to talk outside of it. Once the door was shut, she turned off the lights and sunk down, gesturing for him to do the same. He did, though with some hesitance.

  “Have you called the police yet?”

  “Twice,” he told her. “Line is busy each time. I’m assuming we weren’t the only place hit with… rabid cannibals.”

  The color drained from her face at the term. That’s what they were… rabid cannibals. A wire must have loosened in their brains, because a normal person wouldn’t behave like that.

  This was probably a psychologist or a scientist’s dream.

  “Where were you hiding?” she asked. “All the offices were empty.”

  “Towel bin.” Her eyebrows shot up at the response, having trouble imagining his hulking frame fitting in the fabric bag. “It was horrible.”

  She exhaled deeply, her hands still shaking. “That’s one way to describe it.”

  It was in that moment that she realized she’d dropped the stapler at some point. But when? Her whole brain was in a fog, and she felt her eyes watering in panic as she tried to replay everything that had happened since running into Gary. Her stomach gurgled, and she noticed his eyes dart down to it.

  “We can’t stay here.”

  “We can’t go out there,” she countered. “They’re all over the parking lot.”

  “I know, I saw.” He shuffled closer, his knees pulled up to his chest. Sara tried not to look at the bulge of muscle on his arm, present even beneath his gym jacket. “I mean we can’t stay up here. We should try to get downstairs… There’s food and towels and better hiding. We could wait it out until the police get here.”

  She nibbled her lower lip. All things considered, his suggestion made perfect sense. If she dug really hard, she could probably find a forgotten apple in one of her drawers, but the staff room was downstairs, as was the juice bar, which was loaded with healthy sandwiches and salads too.

  “But those… people might be down there,” she said after a moment’s consideration. “I don’t—”

  “Everything’s been quiet for a long time now,” Gary insisted, holding her gaze with an intensity that made her stomach knot. He’d never looked at her like that before. “Maybe they all went outside. There are two of us now… We could probably take care of one or two of those cannibals if we saw them anyway. I mean, this is our gym. We know where everything is. We have access to all the rooms that are locked.” He leaned forward suddenly and grabbed her wrists, his palms sweaty. “Sara, we can’t just sit up here and starve. We made it through the most horrific thing we’ll probably ever experience… Don’t let that be a waste by dying of hunger while we wait for help.”

  Opening and closing her mouth a few times, she tried to come up with a reason why that wouldn’t work. Her words fell flat, however, and she gave the slightest of nods. “Okay. I guess.”

  “Good. Let’s do this.”

  He helped her to her feet, and she drew in a shaky breath. Really, this was her best option. Gary was one of the biggest trainers in the gym: if he needed to throw somebody around or manhandle a cannibal, she could probably rely on him to do it.

  On her own, she was defenseless. Now she had the best thing she could have hoped for: extra muscle.

  Oh, and someone to think logically. How he kept his cool in a time like this was beyond her. She’d always considered herself calm—rational. Her marks in school had been in the top percentiles, and she left jobs knowing she was one of the better-ranked employees.

  But now it didn’t matter. No matter how talented she was, how smart or disciplined, how good a family she came from—nothing could have prepared her for rabid cannibals swarming her gym. Nothing.

  “Should we… get weapons or something?” she asked as she followed Gary out of her office, her voice dropping to a whisper as soon as the door opened. He glanced over his shoulder at her, eyes darting down to her stapler, and then nodded.

  “We can get some of the weights and bars downstairs.”

  “Works for me.” Those weights carried a punch. A client had once accidentally dropped a fifteen pounder on her foot and she limped for days after. Taking one of those to the face would probably be ten times worse.

  As they descended the stairs, moving as softly as they could, Sara began to feel the familiar pangs of hunger. Dinnertime had come and gone, and she knew she had leftover lasagna in the staff fridge that would have been perfect right about now. She swallowed down the saliva that flooded her mouth at the thought, all the while knowing there was no way she could eat much after what she’d seen today.

  That ear… just lying there… on the floor…

  It was a wonder she hadn’t puked up lunch yet.

  The first floor was vacant once her foot hit the last step, but only in the most general sense was it empty. Sure, there were no rabid cannibals lumbering around, but there were bodies. Bile climbed up her throat as the smell hit her, and she lifted her shirt over her nose so that she could breathe. Slumped over machines, there were bodies everywhere. Some hung off the equipment, while others appeared to have been stuffed under. All were missing limbs: hands, feet, ears. As Sara crept along behind Gary, shaking, she noted that some faces were too mangled to make sense of, but there were definitely noses and lips missing.

  She gagged, doubling over to catch her breath.

  “Don’t stop moving,” Gary hissed, and she looked up with raised eyebrows. “You never know if one of these guys is… you know, one of them taking a siesta after the feast they had earlier.”

  That got her moving. She scuttled after h
im, practically glued to his muscular back as Gary searched the weights for something they could weaponize. In the end, he handed her a metal pole that clients and gym-goers could screw weights of varying size and heaviness onto each end.

  “Go for the head,” he told her as she tested her grip around it. Her hands didn’t quite have the strength they normally did, and the bar felt heavier than usual, but Sara nodded all the same. “It doesn’t matter who they are… If they’re covered in blood, don’t hesitate.”

  “I won’t.” Her voice seemed very small in that moment, though she prided herself on being able to keep it steady. The same couldn’t be said for the rest of her body, but hey, one step at a time.

  Gary found a few dumbbells—massive ones—that he was comfortable with, and once they were equipped, she thought they’d head to the lower levels immediately. However, before taking the stairs, Gary veered off and went for the reception desk by the front doors. Sara remained behind, not wanting to dart across the Plexiglas entryway and attract any unnecessary attention.

  “What are you doing?” she hissed, gripping the metal cylinder as he rooted around through the desk. Her gaze flitted to a blood smear at the base of the desk: it looked like someone had been dragged away, leaving behind a bloody handprint.

  “Just getting some things,” he told her. She could understand wanting the keys, even though the employee cards hanging around their necks opened almost every door in the building. Sara’s understanding stopped, however, when he opened the cash drawer and began stuffing bills into his pockets. There wasn’t much cash, but there’d be enough to buy a few weeks’ worth of groceries at one of the nearby high-end stores.

  “We don’t need money…” Sara trailed off when she heard something clatter outside. “Gary.”

  “I’m coming, I’m coming,” he muttered as he darted around the counter, keys jingling on their chain. When he met her accusatory stare, he rolled his eyes. “We may need some cash when we get out of here.”