Chapter 1
Chapter 1, Day 1, July 10, 2032
John Monroe
Boston, Massachusetts
It was just like the movies, humans ripping the flesh off of others using their teeth to spread the virus. They were zombies. Real freaking zombies. John had just watched the baseball game when the man in front of him was tackled to the ground. The guy who tackled him looked almost normal except for pale gray skin and his cheek ripped off. He bit down into the normal man’s neck and pulled out an artery. Blood squirted up and sprayed John’s clothes. He was frozen in fear. The bleeding man’s screams echoed endlessly in his head. He didn’t move until his brother shoved him away and yelled, “Run!” That snapped him out of it and he sprinted for his car. His brother was right behind until one of the monsters crawled out from under a car, grabbed his leg, and tripped him. John thought about helping his brother and was about to actually do it. What stopped him was the bite in the back of his foot. John abandoned his brother and tried to find his car. Zombies were everywhere. The baseball stadium was like a breeding ground for them since the game had just ended. He was about fifteen feet away when he was knocked to the ground.
At first he thought it was a zombie but luckily it was just a fleeing woman. All of a sudden blood was spraying into his face. The woman screamed in agony as she was dragged away by one of the monsters. “Oh my God,” John said to himself and ran to his car. The doors were locked. He checked all his pockets but it wasn’t there. His brother. His brother had the key and he left him to die. John’s brother was turning or even worse, already turned. If he couldn’t find his brother he would have to run. John knew he could break the window and hotwire the car but he wasn’t going to risk that with all the zombies around. A human shoved him down to use him as bait for the creatures while he got away but karma was a jerk and the man accidentally ran right into one, screaming as the zombie ripped it’s hand into his stomach and chewed up the side of his face. John got up and ran just as a group of them came up behind him. Finding his brother would be impossible so he just kept running. He ran all the way to the McDonald’s and took shelter with a few other people barricading the restaurant. They checked him for bites and when they saw he was clean, they let him in. Including John, there were eight survivors in the fast food place.
There was a man who called himself Wolf, a teenage girl whose name was Jennifer but she went by Jen, a man named Albert, a young boy named Timmy and his mother Elizabeth, an old man whose name was James but insisted people can call him Pop, and a girl about John’s age whose name was Mary. The survivors had barricaded the doors and windows with tables, chairs, and useless other items. The windows themselves didn’t seem strong enough to withstand a wave of zombies but it all depended on how strong they were. Wolf seemed to take leadership of the group since he was the most fit and actually had a knife. Everyone else, including John, just had weapons like pipes and pieces of kitchen supplies. John learned that Jen and Albert knew each other because they were both workers and Pop, Timmy and Elizabeth were here eating when everything happened. Wolf, Mary and John were the only ones that had to run here. Mary was an Uber driver that got stuck in traffic. Apparently her passenger had his window rolled down and a zombie ran up and bit out his throat. Mary was right near the McDonald’s so she made a run for it while the monster was distracted by her passenger. Wolf was ex-military. He uses the name Wolf because that’s what his codename was in the military. He always carries a knife on him and he was just walking down the street right next to the McDonald’s. He said he was attacked by one of the freaks and it got pretty damn close to taking a bite out of him before he finally got his blade from his pants and jammed it into the zombie’s brain. He ran for the closest building, which just so happened to be the fast food restaurant.
John explained what happened to him and how he got here. There was a frantic pounding at the door. Wolf got up and pulled out his knife, just in case it wasn’t another human. Thankfully, it was a human. There were about seven zombies advancing toward him which is why he was so eager to get in. Wolf quickly opened the door and let the guy in. He checked him for bites, and when he was proven to be clean, they welcomed him to the club. “What’s your name?” Mary asked.
“My name is Donald, but you can shorten it down to Don if you’d like,” he said.
“What led you here?” Wolf asked him.
“Those...those things outside. I had no time to try to break into a building. I saw you guys in here and thought it was my best chance at survival. And thank God you guys let me inside,” he explained. The small group of zombies pounded on the plexiglass door. They were stronger than John originally thought and it scared him. More zombies joined the original seven and banged on windows and side doors. John counted fifteen of them at the front door and about seven others banging on other parts of the building. So far the plexiglass held surprisingly well but John doubted it would last much longer. He was right, not long after a few more zombies joined the growing horde, the door cracked. Panic started to break out in the McDonald’s as the crack became cracks.
“Don led them right to us!” Elizabeth yelled. Wolf, Albert, Pop and John were moving all the barricades to the front door. Don just stared at the mob in horror. Elizabeth was holding Timmy tight against her, trying to comfort him. Timmy was only five years old. Poor kid. John was panicking inside but didn’t let it show. He tried to only focus on barricading that door. Just as he put a chair in the blockade, the door shattered. But it wasn’t what John thought was going to happen. The glass was shattered but it was still the door. It didn’t break apart like they all thought. However, this did mean that the plexiglass was a lot weaker and it wouldn’t be much longer before it actually shattered. In a major city like Boston, there were going to be thousands of zombies. The population was over half a million. It was starting to get dark out and the group didn’t want to waste power. So the lights stayed off until it was absolutely necessary to have them on. During the night the zombies were like a flood. The building became absolutely surrounded and they started to regret putting all the blockade pieces in front of the front door only. There were at least a hundred zombies around the McDonald’s perimeter. John sat in the men’s bathroom and cried, thinking about his brother. He wanted to kill himself for hesitating to save him. That small hesitation caused his brother to be bitten.
Wolf was guarding the front door with his knife, Pop played a card game with Timmy and Elizabeth to help distract them from horrors outside, Jen guarded a side door with a fire ax that was in the kitchen, Albert walked around, making sure all the windows were safe, Mary waited in the women’s bathroom because the plan was that if the zombies broke through they would lock themselves in there where there were no windows or glass doors. All the food available had been brought in there for the worst case scenario. Donald did nothing. After being the cause of all this, he just sat on the floor and did nothing. John realized he was being a coward and wanted to prove that he could help so he left the bathroom and backed up Wolf for when that door broke down. The outside looked like a dark red and the zombies were just black creatures moving around. John was terrified. He clutched his pipe, a pretty useless weapon against zombies. His plan was to crack open a few of them while everyone retreated to the bathroom. Then the side door exploded open and the zombies poured in. Jen killed about five of them before she was cornered. Her screams echoed through the McDonald’s. The horde blocked the bathroom. The entire plan was ruined because they came in through the side door instead of the front.
A few straggler zombies broke away from the main group and came towards Wolf and John. Together they were able to kill all the ones that split off. John only killed two while Wolf killed the other six. Elizabeth, Pop and Timmy tried to run. Yes, tried. Elizabeth tried to get up from her seat but a zombie gripped her arm and pulled her into a group of them. She was eaten immediately. Pop picked up Timmy and ran into the kitchen area where Donald was still sitting, doing absolutely nothing. “You killed those women!” Pop yelled at Don. “Because of you, Timmy has no mother!” Just then, Don stood up and walked into the wave of monsters. He didn’t make a sound as his body was ripped to pieces. Timmy was bawling his poor little eyes out.
“No!” Wolf yelled. The zombies had finally broken down the front door and they were pushing easily through the blockade. Mary was still hiding in the bathroom. No one knew if Albert was hiding somewhere or if he’d been bitten and killed. “We need to get to the bathroom!” Wolf screamed to the last few of the survivors. That was easier said than done. The McDonald’s was over half full of zombies and the only way to the bathroom was blocked by them. All of them now focused on Wolf, John, Timmy and Pop.
“We need to separate them. John, lead half into the kitchen. I’ll lead the others into the dining area. Pop, you just keep Timmy safe. We can’t screw this up,” Wolf explained. The plan worked. There was a close call when Pop’s shirt was grabbed by a zombie but Wolf made one clean, strong swipe with his knife and took the things hand off. Inside the bathroom they found Albert. Nobody thought he survived. He was panting like a wild dog. Mary was the only one who knew he was alive but she was locked in the bathroom with him so she couldn’t tell the others. On the way to the bathroom John had broken his pipe after cracking several of the undead over the head. He jammed a sharp piece into one zombie's head and then ditched the pipe altogether for the fire ax Jen had before she died.
Using that ax, John killed four more zombies. He had never been the type of person to kill anyone or anything. He would, however, kill undead, flesh-hungry zombies to save his own life. He just wished he could say he would have done the same for his brother. The bathroom floor was uncomfortable but it was the best any of them were going to get while being trapped in a public restroom to stay safe from zombies. After a little while all of them had fallen asleep. Outside the building, zombies ate almost any living thing they could get their hands on. They particularly liked humans. One man who was taking shelter with a few of his friends on the roof of a flat apartment building was shoved over the edge accidentally and plummeted to his death. Mary stirred a little from the screams.
Albert was having a hard time falling asleep. His leg was itchy and hurt and he couldn’t stop sweating. It was warm in the room but no matter what Albert did he couldn’t stop himself from freezing. Albert rolled up his pant leg and saw the bite. Thin streaks of blood dried up and crusted in his leg hair. He began crying and at some point in the night, Albert turned.
