Read Online Heartland Junk Part I: The End: A ZOMBIE Apocalypse Serial by Eli Nixon - Free Book Online

enjoying this. I'd recognize
that gleam of excitement in his eyes blindfolded. Worse, I couldn't
find a reason to blame him. Hadn't I felt a similar thrill while
going through the medication in the dining room? I'd been washing
dust off windshields and selling bathroom tile sets so long I'd
forgotten the simple, innocent pleasure of purpose . Of tromping through those woods, gripping
that Nerf gun tightly, checking again that it was cocked when I
knew it was, analyzing every minute sound and leafy sway, senses
heightened, escaping. Parents didn't argue out in the woods.
Fathers didn't have a reason not to come home. Mothers didn't have
a chance to lock themselves away from a little boy for hours at a
time. Not in the woods. The air was too crisp, the sun too warm, to
allow such nonsense. Despite the terrible wars Rivet and I imagined
into existence, nobody died in the woods.
    "Where are we
going?" I asked, surrendering the decision to Rivet.
    "Dinkins," he
said. Joshuah Hill's only pharmacy. I didn't mention my house, the
water we'd managed to stockpile, any of that. What we really
needed, we couldn't find there. Dinkins Drug was the logical
place.
    A plastic bottle
struck the floor in the dining room. I raced around the stairway
and saw Jennie scrambling to put the prescription bottles back
where they'd been on the table.
    "What are you
doing?" I asked.
    "Titan knocked
them down," she explained, swallowing.
    "Titan?"
    "The cat." She
nodded. It was on the far edge of the table, eating dry kibble from
a little bowl surrounded by knives. "The name was on his
collar."
    "We're heading
out," Rivet said behind me. "Grab some food and pick a good
weapon." He thrust a small blue backpack at Jennie. "That's for the
meds. Let's go."
     
     

Chapter 8
     
    JANET HAD a silver
Mazda four-door in her garage. Like us, it was gassed to the rim
and ready go. For us, a round of Percs had done the trick. I set
the alarm on my phone for six hours later, 7:30 PM. If the voices
didn't come knocking before then, it was the signal for
dinnertime.
    For our other
dinnertime, we had a duffel stuffed with canned goods, a pile of
frozen Lean Cuisines, and a twelve-pack of Coke, plus our personal
gear. It was bizarre how quickly we'd adapted. I don't think we
really knew what was happening back then, like it hadn't sunk in
yet. For Rivet, and to a lesser extent, me, it felt like we were at
the beginning of an adventure. Jennie's always been the efficient
type, and that hadn't changed, but I couldn't tell what she thought
about the whole thing. She took Titan.
    At the last
minute, we decided not to take the Mazda. It was Jennie's
suggestion that we go in the green Ford pickup out front. There was
more space to store supplies, she said, and it would probably have
an easier time getting past...
    She had trailed
off, not quite ready to give voice to the thought. Rubble,
destruction, bodies, Armageddon. I didn't know what she'd meant to
say, but I knew what she meant by it all the same. At that point,
we'd only seen one halfy—a half-changed person—and none of the
full-fledged zombies. Definitely no stags at that point, a word
Rivet coined for staggerers. Those wouldn't come until much later.
Stags, rotters, walking agents of stinking putrefaction—the zombies
that had already begun to decay and slow down. I think we were
riding pretty high on what we thought was going to be a walk in the
park. My chest still smarted, but I'd bandaged it up and thought I
looked pretty fucking swag in my bloodstained shirt. Weren't we
cool, making up witty names for dead people.
    We had no
idea.
    So here's how our
gear stacked up, all tidy and packed away in three backpacks, plus
one extra duffel:
     
    Jennie —Six
cans of food (peaches, red beans, black beans, asparagus, kidney
beans, peas). Four bottles of semithinthetic opioid narcotics
(outer pocket, for easy access). One large steak knife. One bag of
dry kitty kibble (salmon). One flashlight. One pair of scissors.
One