The Grave: A Zombie Novel

by Russ Watts

  Chet took a few practice swipes at the woman, but in the end he shoved the knife back in his belt and sat against their car with a dejected look. “I’m hungry Floyd.”

  “You can’t be that hungry. You’re letting our food go,” Floyd said.

  “We’re both letting her go. We aren’t animals Floydems. We would rather keep our human morality and starve than go to hell for cutting our teeth on human flesh. I don’t think I really could have eaten her anyway. It would have been worse to kill her and then not be able to eat her.”

  “I agree,” Floyd said.

  The woman looked confused. “Can I go?” she asked.

  “You can go,” Floyd said. She didn’t waste another second as she stood up and ran out of the shop.

  “Chet?” Floyd felt sorry for his friend who looked so glum.

  “Yeah Floyd?”

  “I just want you to know that if I die first you can feel free to eat me guilt-free. I disavow you of any issues of morality, social justice or purgatory.”

  “Thanks, Floyd,” Chet said. “That means a lot. So what do we do now?” Chet asked. Before Floyd could answer him, the woman’s screams erupted from the front yard.

  Chapter - 3

  The human instinct of curiosity overpowered Chet and Floyd’s survival instinct. They headed straight for the small window in the back of the old tobacco shop. It was the only entrance that they had not fortified both outside and in. Floyd was through the hole first with Chet crashing after him.

  Following their unspoken rule of “he who enters last closes the latch,” Chet slammed the heavy wooden panel shut and barred it with a small wooden beam.

  “Get up here Chet!” Floyd yelled from the front.

  Chet trotted up to Floyd who leaned against the store’s front door with his gun drawn. Over the last few days they would swap turns either looking for precious tobacco or fortifying the building.

  Bulwarking was something they both excelled in. Floyd had remarked once that it was due to their mutual love for zombie movies. Floyd believed that untold hours in front of a video screen, watching people fortify against the living dead, had given them all the training they needed in this new world they lived in. At first Chet had balked at the suggestion, but the last four years of survival had (recently) made him reconsider his view.

  Every time they worked to secure their chosen environment, Floyd would be sure to comment on their work.

  “Do think this is okay?” Chet would ask of a nailed and fastened doorway.

  “Yes. I think this will work out just fine. I see you’ve used the exact supports that kept several of the extras alive in the movie Return of the Living Dead.” Floyd would say these things wearing the same annoying smile he always did when he knew he was right.

  “I did not copy that movie. This is my own work! This is my own…darn it Floyd. You’re right.”

  “Yes I am Chet. This should hold up just fine. They all died because one of them was harboring a secret zombie bite, and they got killed from within when he changed over. A classic zombie movie, although it wasn’t classic at the time,” Floyd said.

  Chet had to admit that Floyd was onto something. It didn’t matter too much to Chet that he was wrong. Not this time. Since it meant so much credit to his own survival. Usually he would rather take a bullet then be wrong. Chet smiled, “Maybe you’re growing as a person,” he thought.

  When securing the store, they left two small rectangular openings in the front door, each about the size of a mailbox. The rest was nailed, fastened, locked and bolted. They even went to the extent of pouring a good amount of homemade concrete at the base of the door. Nothing was taking this out. The windows were pretty well closed off, but people would have better luck coming through those. They never did though. They always tried for the door.

  Chet looked out of his rectangle. His was the one on the left, which always annoyed him a little. Floyd got the one on the right since had the shotgun. Because both of them were right-handed, Chet was at a disadvantage when marauders attacked. He placated his annoyance with the virtue of meeting his friend half-way. Chet was proud of his ability to compromise.

  “I was wondering if you could think of any zombie movie that had people pour concrete at the base of the door,” Chet said.

  “What are you talking about?” Floyd said.

  “I can’t think of any. That was my idea. You have to admit that I didn’t steal that from anyone else.”

  “Could you please pay attention to what’s going on? I think we have more pressing issues.” Floyd nodded to the clamor outside.

  Chet looked out his rectangle and saw a flat bed truck rolled up onto the sidewalk in front of the store. There were six men, two which were holding onto the woman who was screaming and trashing.

  “See her moving? I don’t think she ever thought we were going to kill her,” Floyd said, looking annoyed.

  “They all have guns,” Chet said. “We only have one gun. How do you think they find enough gas to run a truck that big?”

  “Maybe we can catch one of them and find out. We could use more fuel for the Skull Beetle,” Floyd said. The men outside were talking to each other and gesturing to the woman and the store. She was telling the men about Chet and Floyd being inside and about Floyd’s gun.

  “I don’t think they have bullets for those guns,” Chet said.

  “I don’t think so either.” Floyd listened to the woman for a moment then started. “Look at that Chet!”

  Chet had seen it at the same time Floyd did. They marveled as a Golden Retriever jumped out of the truck’s cab and padded over to the woman, who kicked at it as it tried to smell her.

  “I haven’t seen one of those in a long time,” Chet said.

  One of the men took a tire iron from the back of the truck and hit the woman over the head with it. Hard. Her body fell limp. One more hit to the head, and the man nonchalantly threw the iron back onto the truck. The woman quivered for a few moments and died.

  “I think we have some cannibals here Chet,” Floyd said.

  Chet jumped backwards and threw his hands in the air. “This is exactly what’s wrong with us Floyd. Did you see how they did that? They didn’t have to talk about it or feel conflicted about it. They just smacked her over the head and got done with it. What is wrong with us? We have no business being alive. We could learn something from them Floyd. We really could.”

  The men dragged the woman’s body, and together they heaved her onto the bed of the truck. One of them went about the business of strapping her in place so she wouldn’t bounce off as they went down the road.

  “Do you think they’ll leave us alone?” Floyd asked.

  “Probably not,” Chet said. “If they are anything like anybody nowadays they’ll think were holed up in here because we have something. They’ll especially think it when they find out how well this place is locked up.”

  “We don’t have anything,” Floyd said.

  “Well the jokes on them then,” Chet said and smiled. “Do you think they’ve seen us yet?”

  “I don’t think so. Let’s hang back.” Floyd and Chet pulled back a bit from the front door openings and peered through a couple peepholes they drilled in the walls. After the men had secured the woman to the bed of the truck, they leaned against the vehicle and stared at the tobacco store. One of the men, a tall, swarthy looking fellow whose entire wardrobe consisted of leather, shouted at the store.

  “I know you are watching me. You may as well tell me what you’re hiding in there. Give us our fair share, and we’ll leave you alone. Believe me you had better give us enough, or we’ll have to get in there and take what’s owed. Don’t be stingy now. Act as if your lives depended on it.”

  “We don’t have anything in here. There is nothing. No food or water. We have less than you. You should give us our share of whatever you have on the truck,” Chet said.

  “I could cut the woman’s legs off from the knees down and shove them through the holes you have
cut in the door,” the leather clad man said, smiling. His compatriots laughed. “That’s not really what you meant though, was it?”

  “Not really,” Chet said. Floyd punched him in the shoulder. “What the hell Floyd!”

  “You’re making us look like a couple of jerks,” Floyd said.

  “You’re not saying anything. One of us has to say something.”

  “Say something smarter,” Floyd said. Chet held up his hands in front of him in a calming gesture. He put his mouth back up to the peephole.

  “Hey! Just kidding before. We have some great stuff in here. We have water and a lot of it. We have a ton of food. All these canned goods are so awesome. I have been stuffing myself for days. I can also tell you that this tobacconist had a lot of great cigars that I just can’t seem to stop puffing on. I am in Shangri-La here you guys. This is my heaven. You should really come over here and check it out.” Chet looked back through the hole. The men were chuckling.

  “You are full of crud buddy. You obviously don’t live around here, but we do. That place has been picked clean for as long as I can remember. It was just about stripped the day the world went up in smoke. When the destruction happened and people knew there wouldn’t be another tobacco crop, they went nuts for their smokes.” The leather man said it, and Chet knew it to be true. He had been one of them. The people looted the liquor and cigar stores en masse to stock up on items that they would probably never see again.

  “I’ve got something real good in here for you. Come and get it,” Chet said.

  “What do you have planned?” Floyd whispered.

  “I don’t know.”

  “What are you going to do when they come over here?”

  “I already said I don’t know Floyd,” Chet said. “Do I have to think of everything?”

  “I will come in there if you don’t come out. You can count on that,” the leather-clad man said. “But it seems like we have ourselves enough to eat for a day or two.” He slapped the thigh of the dead woman. Her body jiggled from the blow. “I could leave a couple sentries here to watch you and keep you safe inside until we get hungry and come back for you.”

  “Not a bad idea.” Chet yelled through the peephole.

  “It is but it’s not what we’re going to do. We’re going to come in there right now and find out what your hiding, take it, kill you, throw you on the back of the truck next to your woman and have ourselves a big old barbeque.” The leather-clad man’s group whooped at the suggestion. They broke apart and walked toward and around the store.“We have a gun,” Chet yelled. The men kept coming.

  “Do you have any bullets?” The leather clad man asked as he sauntered up to the front door.

  “What should I tell him?” Chet whispered to Floyd.

  “Tell him yes,” Floyd said.

  “Yeah we have bullets,” Chet said.

  “You had better use them,” the leather-clad man said. He had walked all the way up to the rectangle openings, put his face close and looked around the room. His view of the empty, ransacked tobacconist shop was obliterated by the view of a brick as Floyd smashed him directly between the eyes. The leather man fell flat backwards. Chet and Floyd heard his gang smashing the fortified windows and back entrance.

  One of the men, a smallish squat one went back to their leader and kneeled down, checking his bloodied face. He gave a yelp as a small metal object smacked him in the forehead. The blonde rubbed his head as and wiped at a small trickle of blood that ran down a tiny cut. He looked at the door annoyed.

  “Got him!” Chet yelled to Floyd, who was at the back door making sure they were holding.

  “Got him with what? Oh, no. No. No. No. Chet you are not going to use those darn ninja stars again.” Floyd shook his head and sighed.

  “What do you mean? These things are awesome!” Chet said, brandishing a throwing star and posing as if for a movie poster. “This one looks like a wave.”

  “Those things are worthless.”

  “They are not!”

  “They totally are!” Floyd said. “Since we found those things a month ago, I’ve had to watch you prance around every day, pretending to be the next Bruce Leroy. If they were worth anything, somebody else would have taken them. They aren’t real throwing stars. They are cheap metal knockoffs. They aren’t even sharp.”

  “Watch this.” Chet said and sent the throwing star at top speed out of the left opening. The star bounced off the blonde’s forehead again, knocking him backwards. A torrent of curse words filled the air.

  “I have to admit your aim is impressive,” Floyd said. “But all you’re doing is pissing them off.”

  “It’s worked before,” Chet said.

  “We’re running out of time for that,” Floyd said. “Sometimes people leave us alone because you annoy them with those things, they’ve thought it too much of a bother. After all, that must totally sting.”

  “You bet it does,” Chet said, watching the squat blonde hold his head in his hands.

  “That being what it is, we are constantly getting closer and closer to there being no food at all for anybody. No commodities. Nothing. Sooner or later we will be worth the bother. If we were the last morsel of food on the planet, someone would be tearing their way in here tooth and nail. It wouldn’t matter how many shurikens you bounced off their head.

  “Words!” Chet screeched. Floyd always thought Chet got a little scary when they were in the midst of violence. There was something really off about the guy. Like he was barely hanging on. “I am a samurai! Your simple words mean nothing to a man of the way. I wrote the Blue Cliff Record. I have stood in midst of The Great Wave off Kanagawa. I have played Dynasty Warriors 3 on the PlayStation until my hands bled.”

  “Samurai didn’t use shuriken,” Floyd said. “Ninjas used them against the samurai. It was beneath the samurai to use such a weapon. Throwing stars have no honor.”

  Chet gave Floyd a pitying look. “You just don’t know anything about samurai Floyd. I will have to teach you someday.” The sound of splintering wood came from the back of the store. “Do you think we’re in for trouble?”

  “How many of those things do you have?” Floyd asked. The worried look on his face that gave Chet the answer he needed.

  “Plenty. About half a backpack full,” Chet said. “Enough to annoy-urai them for a bit. Let me know when they start breaking through the back.”

  “Will do,” Floyd said. Chet went back to the front door. The blonde man was now standing and rubbing his head as he held on to the truck. Chet threw a star that bounced off the man’s ankle. He crumpled in a heap.

  He screamed at Chet while clutching his ankle. “YOU SON OF A B…AAAAG!” He didn’t get the curse out as another star hit him right in the front teeth. Or rather, where his front teeth were a second before the impact of cheap metal sent them spinning into the street.

  Available now from www.severedpress.com and Amazon

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  PROLOGUE

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  EPILOGUE

  Sample of “Chet and Floyd vs. The Apocalypse”