The Adventures of Steve and Terry: The Zombie Chronicles (2 page)

Everyone looked at each other, not
sure how to respond to that. “As long as they leave the house alone we should
be fine,” Antwon said.

“Why don’t we make a run for it in
your truck?” Terry asked.

“Outta gas.”

“That sucks,” Steve said.

Suddenly shots rang out. They all
jumped to their feet and rushed to the boarded up windows to peer through
cracks. They saw three people, two men and a woman, running through the zombies,
headed straight for the house. One of the men was carrying a shotgun, the other
a pistol.

“Help me pry off the boards over
the door,” Antwon said, grabbing his crowbar and tossing Terry the hammer. They
rushed to the front door and began to pry off the boards. They got it open just
as the people reached the porch. They ripped the door open, Antwon waving the
people inside.

“Quick, quick,” he said. The trio
rushed past him into the house. The zombies were close on their heels. They
tried to close the door again, but a zombie in work overalls got its arm
through. They tried hitting the arm with the crowbar and hammer, but if the
zombie felt anything it gave no indication.

“Open the door!” Steve yelled.
They let the door open and the zombie shoved inside to come face to face with
Steve’s AK. He pulled the trigger and the zombie’s head disintegrated. “Follow
me!” Steve cried, kicking the zombie back and stepping out onto the porch.

The zombies were converging on
Steve, but he bravely held his ground. He kicked a zombie off of the porch and
fired bursts from his AK. He was shooting from the hip, just like in all the
action movies he had seen. In the movies they always had perfect aim shooting
this way. Unfortunately for Steve, he was hitting the zombies in the torso, or
missing completely. He made his way off the porch, firing wildly and yelling
challenges at the zombies. He got almost to the truck when the AK ran out of
ammo. He turned back to the others, but to his shock they had not followed him.
In fact, they weren’t even watching him, the front door was closed.

“Oh shit,” Steve squeaked out. He
grabbed the AK by the barrel and, using it much like a club, hit the nearest
zombie in the head. He clobbered and kicked zombies as he made his way back to
the house. When he reached the porch he threw the AK into the charging zombies
and pounded on the door. “Let me in! Let me in!” he cried. The door flew open
and he fell through it into the house. It slammed behind him and locked.

Steve lay on his back on the faded
rug, breathing heavily. When he caught his breath he sat up and yelled, “You
guys are assholes!”

“Did you really think we were
gonna follow you into a horde of zombies?” Terry asked.

“I thought you would at least have
had my back.”

“Hey, you had the AK; all I got is
this axe.”

“They’re coming,” Antwon said as
he renailed a board over the door.

They heard the zombies’ moans
first, then the pounding. The three newcomers huddled near the stairs.

“What can we do?” the younger of
the two men asked. He held the shotgun.

“Shoot between the cracks,” Antwon
said, leveling his rifle between nailed up boards. The report rang out in the
small house and they heard a zombie fall back off the porch.

“Got it!” the young man said,
shooting as well.

Soon everyone with a gun was
shooting, while those without, Terry, Steve, and the new woman, stayed out of
the way. As the battle for the house continued, Steve suddenly noticed Terry
was gone. He started to look for him, finding him as he came up from the
basement.

“Look what I found,” Terry said,
holding up a large cardboard box.

“It’s a box,” Steve said.

“I think I can use it to get past
the zombies.”

“How?”

“Like a duck blind. They won’t
even know I’m in here.”

“A duck blind works because it
blends into its surroundings, the ducks can’t see it. I think the zombies will
notice a random cardboard box.”

“It’s camouflage.”

“It’s a box.”

“It’s zombie armor!” Terry said
angrily.

“Fine, fine.”

“I also found these,” Terry said,
holding up two two-way radios. He handed one to Steve.

Just then they heard the board
over the door crack. “They’re coming through!” Antwon yelled. Steve and Terry
ran back into the living room to find zombies pouring in through the front
door. “Upstairs,” Antwon cried as he fired into the advancing horde.

Amber was already halfway up the
stairs. The young man was closest to the door, and as he turned, he was
suddenly grabbed by zombies. Steve rushed to help, but all he could get a hold
of was the man’s shotgun. As the young man was pulled screaming into the mass
of zombies he let go of the gun. Steve fell back with the gun in his grasp. The
girl screamed. Steve rushed to the stairs as Terry let out a quiet whimper and
jumped under his box.

The survivors were making their
way up the stairs when the man with the pistol tripped and fell to his face.
Zombies grabbed his ankles and he was dragged kicking and screaming to his
death. The rest made it to the top of the stairs and fired into the mass of
walking dead. As they made their way to a bedroom Steve looked for Terry.

“Holy shit!” he exclaimed.

“What?” Antwon asked.

“That stupid box idea worked,
they’re walking right past him.”

“Come on, we’ve got to barricade
ourselves in a room.”

They ran to the largest bedroom
and began to barricade the door. They heard the zombies thump up the stairs. It
was several minutes until the dead made their way to the room where the four
were holed up. The zombies pounded on the door, but the hallway was narrow and
they could only come at the door two or three at a time.

“Looks like it’ll hold,” Antwon
said, leaning back against the wall and sliding to the floor. “When I woke up
this morning, never figured my day would end like this. I wonder how Terry’s
doin?”

“Let’s ask,” Steve said, holding
up the radio Terry had given him. “Terry, how you doin down there?”

The radio squawked and Terry’s
voice came over in a whisper, “Told you the box would work.”

“Yeah, you sure showed me.”

“I can’t talk right now though,
zombies everywhere.”

“Hang in there, buddy. Hang in
there.”

The group tried to keep themselves
busy anyway they could. Steve found a pack of cards and they played hearts. It
was a couple hours later when the banging on their door finally stopped.

“Do you think they gave up?” Steve
asked.

“Don’t know,” Antwon said,
standing and walking to the door. “Terry must be long gone by now. Hopefully
he’ll bring back help.”

“Actually,” Steve said, standing
by the window. “He’s barely off the porch.”

“What?!”

Steve got on the radio. “Terry,
buddy, what’s goin on? You’re barely moving down there.”

Terry’s response came back in a
whisper, “I can only move a couple inches at a time, otherwise the zombies start
tapping on the box, and that really, really scares me.”

“You’ll never get anywhere at that
rate.”

“Hindsight’s always twenty-twenty,
isn’t it?”

Steve turned back to Antwon, “I
wouldn’t be counting on Terry coming to the rescue anytime soon.”

“Terrific.”

They went back to playing cards,
this time poker, in hindsight, it wasn’t the best idea. After more than an hour
of playing, the new girl took six cards. Amber leapt to her feet brandishing
her pistol.

“You cheater!”

“Whoa, whoa,” Antwon said. “Let’s
calm down, it’s only a—”

But too late, Amber shot the new
girl in the head.

“Holy shit!” Steve cried, jumping
to his feet.

“She—she was cheating,” Amber said
defensively, waving the gun back and forth.

“O-okay,” Antwon said. “You wanna
give me the gun?”

“No!” Amber said, backing into the
corner and pointing the gun at Antwon.

“Okay, okay, you can keep it.”

Just then the radio squawked.
“This is Alpha to the Crow’s Nest.”

“Terry?” Steve asked.

“No names over the com lines!”
Terry said angrily. “This is Alpha!”

“Okay, this is the Crow’s Nest.”

“I haven’t had anything to drink
in a long time, and this box is really hot.”

“He may be hallucinating at this
point,” Antwon said.

“Terry,” Steve asked over the
radio, “Are you okay?”

“There’s no bathroom either,”
Terry said. “That may have been a small oversight on my part.”

Steve looked out the window.
“Terry, you’re near the truck, maybe you can take refuge in there.”

“I’m not leaving my post. This box
and I have been through a lot.”

All turned as something pounded on
the bedroom door. “They’re back,” Antwon said.

“We’ll never make it,” Amber said
suddenly, putting the gun to her temple.

“Wait!” Antwon yelled, but too
late.

She shot herself.

“Damn!”

“We’ve gotta get out of this
room,” Steve said.

“Alright, let’s make a run for it.
We’ll grab Terry, get in the truck, and drive until the fumes run out.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

They unbarricaded the door. Antwon
opened it and Steve fired into the zombies crowded near the entry. The zombies
went down and Steve and Antwon were past them. They shot any zombies that got
close. They reached the stairs, Antwon in the lead. The big man suddenly
stumbled and then fell down the stairs. Steve vaulted down the stairs to
Antwon’s side, but the man was unmoving. Steve rolled him over to see his neck
was broken.

“Shit!”

Steve shot into the milling
zombies as he backed down the hallway. He turned in the first door he came to,
slamming it and locking it. Turned out to be a bathroom. The zombies pounded on
the door, but couldn’t get through.

As time passed, Steve seemed to
come in and out. But before he knew it light was shining through the small
window above the shower. He noticed the zombies were no longer pounding on the
door either. And then he heard gunshots. Steve quietly unlocked and opened the
bathroom door to find no zombies in the hallway. He cautiously made his way
down the hall to the living room, but still encountered no zombies. He walked
out the front door onto the porch to see a group of men with rifles slowly
making their way to the house. And Steve suddenly realized he was saved.

He saw Terry’s box against the
truck and rushed over. “Terry, Terry?” He flipped the box over to see Terry
curled up in a ball. Terry slowly opened his eyes.

“Did we make it?”

“Yeah buddy, we did.” Terry
stretched and stood up. “Holy shit!” Steve said, stepping back. “You
smell
like shit.”

“No bathroom, remember. Plus, the
smell seemed to make the zombies leave me alone, so I spread it all over me.”

“Wait, you’re . . .”

“Covered in shit, yes.”

“Ugh.”

“Well, we made it. Where are the
others?”

“They didn’t,” Steve said.

“Not even Amber?” Terry asked.
Steve shook his head. “That’s a shame, she was hot.”

“And apparently crazy.”

“So, what now?” Terry asked.

“Well buddy, to tell you the
truth, I think the adventure is just beginning.”

II. The
Mall

Michael clicked on the small video
camera. He adjusted it until his face was in the center of the screen. “Day ten
of our survivors’ log. We have been moving from one location to another, but no
place seems secure. We haven’t been able to fortify any place to withstand the
hordes of dead. The plague that is the walking dead has spread quickly, faster
in the major cities. We have no means of getting out of the city, yet, but one
of our group suggested maybe we take refuge in the mall. It should have the
adequate resources we need to survive.

“On another note, we gained two
new members to our survivors’ group,” the camera wobbled as Michael picked it
up and angled it a different way to show two balding, pudgy men leaning against
a brick wall, one slightly shorter than the other. “They say their names are
Steve and Terry, and to hear them tell it, they have survived one close run-in
with zombies already. As survivors with firsthand experience in fighting the
dead, they should be valuable additions. We now number twelve in all. We have
five shotguns, including one Steve brought with him, and four pistols,
including one Terry brought with him. Hopefully, tomorrow will bring good news
and the mall will pan out as a new refuge.” Michael clicked the camera off, his
log done.

The small group approached the
mall cautiously. The morning sun had risen only an hour ago. The group made
their way to one of the loading bay areas. Steve immediately tried the door.

“Locked,” he said.

“No duh, Sherlock,” Terry said.
“You wouldn’t expect it to be open, now would you?”

Steve just shrugged his shoulders.
“Step back,” Brian said, a broad shouldered former cop. He unloaded two slugs
into the lock.

Steve tried the door again. “Nope,
still locked.”

“Damn!”

The noise must have attracted some
of the local walking dead, because four of them came shambling around the
corner of the building. The four zombies took one look at the group and then
broke into dead sprints towards them.

“Holy hell!” Steve screamed in a
high pitched voice.

Brian and two others unloaded into
the group and quickly put them down. Once the zombies were put down, Terry
stepped out from behind the dumpster where he had taken cover.

“They can run?!” Steve asked,
shocked. Terry shrugged. “Holy shit. I mean, I’ve never seen them run before.
This is . . . holy shit, they can run.”

“The shooting will attract more,”
Michael said.

“I think I can reach that ladder
and lower it down,” Stephanie said, pointing to a ladder mounted on the wall.
“Someone help me up.”

Tom, a tall, well built offensive
lineman type helped her up. She was able to reach the ladder and pull it down.
The group made their way one at a time up the ladder unto the roof. The mall
was massive, with triangular skylights spaced at regular intervals. They found
one skylight that opened up onto a department store of some kind.

“That’s not too far a drop,”
Angelo said, a tanned former construction worker.

“We could do that,” April said, a
teenage survivor and youngest of the group.

“Okay then,” Brian said, leveling
his shotgun and stepping back. He unloaded three rounds of buckshot into the
glass. But all it did was put little holes in the skylight and a few spider
cracks. “Well, hell,” Brian said.

Steve walked up onto the pane of
glass. “Its safety glass,” he said, jumping up and down. “It’s not just gonna
bre—” The entire pane gave way and Steve fell into the department store with a
high pitched scream.

Everyone rushed to the opening to
see him lying flat on his back groaning. “Steve, buddy,” Terry called down.
“You okay man?”

Steve managed to roll up on his
side and give them all the middle finger. He got to his feet with another groan
and moved out of the way so that everyone else could jump down. They spread
out, making sure the store was clear of zombies. Once they were sure none were
inside they moved to the doors. Brian pumped his shotgun and leveled it at the
glass when Terry quickly stepped in front of him.

“Do you have to shoot everything?”
Terry turned and pushed on the door which opened easily. “See?” he said,
turning back to frown at Brian.

They all made their way out onto
the second story of the mall. Shops lined both sides, selling everything from
shoes to sofas. “Let’s split up,” Michael said.

“Good idea,” Brian said.

They split up into twos and
threes. Steve and Terry checked the lower east side of the mall. “You know,”
Steve said as they walked. “I’ve seen this movie. There should be a gun store
somewhere in here, loaded with every weapon we could dream of.”

“You really think so?” Terry
asked.

“Yeah!”

They both gave whoops and started
to run, quickly glancing in windows as they ran past them. They checked all the
stores on the lower levels, but no gun store. “I just remembered,” Steve said.
“In the remake there was no gun store.”

“We haven’t checked the upper
level yet,” Terry said hopefully.

Steve smiled, “Right!”

They ran up the unmoving
escalator, past the group coming down. “Hey, hey, where you guys goin?” Michael
asked as they ran past.

“Gun store,” Steve yelled over his
shoulder as they reached the second floor.

“But there are no gun stores in
malls,” Brian said to Michael.

“Eh, let them have their fun.”

Steve and Terry ran almost the
whole upper level, but to their disappointment there was no gun store. Suddenly
as they passed one store Steve skidded to a stop. Terry got a few steps ahead
before stopping as well.

“What?” he asked. “What is it?”

“Look.”

Terry looked into the store and
his jaw dropped. It was some kind of novelty shop or something, and it was
filled with swords, axes, spears, armor, and a bunch of other weapons they
didn’t even know what they were. They looked at each other with big smiles and
at the same time said, “Jackpot.”

Michael and the group all huddled
in the food court. “Alright, we need to fortify weak spots and lock this place
down. There’s enough food and water for us to last several weeks if we have
to.” He stopped and looked around. “Where are Steve and Terry?”

A loud metal clang rang out,
echoing through the mall. “What was that?” Tom asked.

“I don’t know,” Michael said,
standing up and turning. They made their way out of the food court.

“Freedom!” someone yelled in a
Scottish accent.

“I will vanquish thee,” someone
else cried in a bad accent.

The metal clang rang out again.
Squeaks, clangs, and bangs filled the mall. As the group came out from the food
court they saw Steve and Terry wearing two barely fitting suits of armor and
wielding massive swords. They were fighting, the armor squeaking and screeching
as they moved, their sword strikes clanging out. The group stopped a short
distance from the dueling fat men. Suddenly, one of the men stumbled back from
a strike and fell to the floor with a resounding crash. He dropped his sword
and lifted his visor to reveal a sweating, huffing and puffing Steve. The two
men seemed to finally notice their audience. Terry lifted his visor and turned
while Steve tried unsuccessfully to sit up.

“What are you guys doing?” Michael
asked.

“Brave Heart,” “Gladiator,” Steve
and Terry said at the same time. They both looked at each other.

“I thought we were doing
Gladiator,” Steve said.

“I’m using a Scottish accent,”
Terry said.

“Well I was using a Roman accent.”

“First of all, Gladiator was
Spanish, and second, your accent sounded like a horrible attempt at an English
accent, not Roman.”

“And how do you know what Romans
sounded like?”

“Well, it’s obvious they weren’t
English.”

Steve started to protest, but
Michael cut him off. “Both of you!” They turned and looked at him. “Do you
realize we are in the middle of a zombie apocalypse, with hordes of the
ravenous dead outside this mall just waiting to eat us alive?”

“Well, duh,” both Steve and Terry
said.

“We’re not idiots,” Terry said.

Michael just shook his head. “Will
you two get out of the armor and help us fortify this place?”

“Yeah,” Terry said.

“Sure thing,” Steve said. The
group shook their heads as they turned and walked away. Again Steve tried to
sit up, but he was like a turtle on its back. “Hey,” he said to Terry. “A
little help here?”

The group checked all the doors,
but found they were locked; the glass doors were made of safety glass, so
nothing short of a gun blast and a battering ram would get through them. They
then checked all the storerooms, bay doors, and loading areas.

“Maybe we should try and reinforce
these doors,” Michael said.

“This door is solid steel with two
locks, including a deadbolt,” Steve said, tapping the door with a claymore
sword.

“Do you two
have
to wear
those swords everywhere you go?”

“When we run outta ammo ’cause
Brian keeps shooting everything in sight, you’re gonna be happy we have these
swords,” Steve said.

“Yeah,” Terry added.

Steve sheathed the sword across
his back as the group made their way back to the main part of the mall. A week
seemed to come and go rather quickly. The group set up a basketball hoop in a
cleared area of the mall. They rode bikes around, played paintball, watched
movies, and played video games. They could almost forget the world had come to
an end . . . almost.

Steve and Terry were patrolling
the roof of the mall with Shane, a long haired emo kid. The dead filled the parking
lot, thickest around the doors leading into the mall. The sun was just
beginning to set when they saw the group of vehicles pull into the far end of
the parking lot.

“Wonder who they could be,” Terry
said, raising his binoculars. “I can see five pickups, six or seven
motorcycles, and a big-rig wrecker with a massive plow on the front of it.
Almost looks like a battering ram.”

They all turned as someone joined
them on the roof. Carla, a thin, blond, former lawyer looked out at the group
of newcomers. “Michael called a meeting,” she said. “We just picked someone up
on the radio.”

They followed her back into the
mall where the rest of the group was circled around an old CB set they had
found in a backroom. “We don’t want any trouble,” Michael was saying into the
mic when they reached the group.

“Then just open up them doors and
let us in,” came a staticy response over the radio.

“I told you, we don’t have the
keys to the facility, we can’t open the doors.”

“You’re pretty stingy for people
that have everything,” came the response.

“Look, we’re not trying to—”

“No, you look, we’re comin in, one
way or another,” there were several voices laughing and then the radio went
dead.

“Alright people,” Michael said.
“We have a hostile group coming to take this place away from us. Those with
weapons, prepare to defend us. We’ll make our stand on the second level.”

The group made its way to the
second level, the men and women with weapons fanning out. They heard the sound
of the big-rig wrecker, its engine roaring as it sped towards the mall. Then
the whole building shook as something smashed through the front doors. There
was a beeping of a truck backing up and the screech of steel on steel. Then
came whoops and hollers as motorcycles came roaring through the mall. The
motorcycles were followed by fifteen to twenty men carrying an assortment of
weapons, everything from pistols to sledgehammers.

Brian was the first to open fire,
his shotgun blast ringing out. The attackers immediately trained on him. Soon
the entire mall was filled with gunfire, pistols, rifles, and shotguns all
going off; smoke and hot lead filling the area. No one was getting hit though.
One and all seemed to be bad shots. It was one thing to shoot zombies, quite
another to shoot the living.

Steve and Terry were two of the
first to run out of ammo. They fell back to a sporting goods store to make
their stand. The invaders soon made it to the second level, glass shattering as
stray bullets flew everywhere. And then the gunfire stopped. There were a few
clicks as people tried to fire empty guns. Now it was down to hand to hand
combat.

Two invaders ran into the sporting
goods store where Steve and Terry had taken cover. Both of the pudgy men were
hiding in the middle of clothes racks. One of the attackers picked up a
baseball bat and gave it an experimental swing. With a nod he started back out
into the mall when Terry jumped up and opened fire with a paintball gun. He hit
the man in the face and eyes, the invader falling back with a cry.