HOW MANY TIMES MUST I KILL YOU BEFORE YOU DIE

Everybody eventually has to find his or her purpose in the Zombie end-times.

I got off to a dangerously wild and rocky start to the end of the world.

But, now I occupy my days with a job I love.

For your sake, pray that you eventually meet me.

SAM

(Season 4, Episode 16)

HOW MANY TIMES MUST I  KILL YOU BEFORE YOU DIE

(Raleigh, N.C.)

  … I’ve shot you three times -- twice in the chest and once in the left kneecap, and you still keep on coming at me. I pushed you out of the second floor window and watched as you fell onto your back, amidst a rain of broken glass, and gasped in horror as you immediately stood up and began to shamble my direction again. I broke your right collar bone with the metal baseball bat. I smashed in your nose and teeth with another well placed swing… and you still keep on coming. How many times must I kill you before you die?

  This must be a goddamn dream. What in the hell is going on and why is it going on with me?

***

  My name is Shepard Allen Martin. I was dead asleep in my bed that fateful morning. I abruptly awakened when I hear a loud pounding on my bedroom door… inside my apartment! I am a single man who lives alone. “What the hell?” I whispered under my breath as I grabbed my  9mm Smith & Wesson from out of the top drawer of my nightstand right there beside my bed on the left side.... where I sleep. I quietly tiptoed toward the door ready to put my pistol into the face of the crazy idiot who was obviously home invading!
   
     As I was about to turn the knob to swing open the door to confront the fool on the other side, my bedroom door burst in toward me… slamming me back four steps before I tripped over my footstool and crashed to the floor.
   
     Something moved toward me in the darkness behind the closed bedroom window curtains blocking the early morning sun... and my reaction to the action was to fire three shots in the direction of the door.             Whoever crashed into my bedroom dropped like a sack of potatoes right in its spot. I scrambled up to my feet and scooted around the ‘someone’ to flick on my bedroom lights. What I saw was both shocking and horrifying… it appeared to be a very not-dead, shoeless, man dressed in tattered clothing struggling to stand up on his wobbly legs, hindered by his left shattered kneecap. I immediately realized that this was not a normal man! A normal man will not take the bullet damage this man took without at least showing the signs of severe pain. This man was not in pain.

  Suddenly the man wildly swung his left hand at me and slapped my pistol from my hand. It landed under my heavy king size bed. I reached over to my right and grabbed the baseball bat I kept there.

  I swung the bat several times at the man, contacting him on his left shoulder and doing obvious damage. But, the man continued to stand upright and then began to bite at me as he limped toward me. Without thinking, I took the baseball bat, pointed it toward the man and rushed toward him using it as a battering ram. I struck him directly in the center of the chest… pushing him back, right out of my closed second floor window. He burst through the window to fall two stories to what I thought would be his death. Imagine my horror when he stood up and began to walk toward the entrance of my building.

  I dived under my bed to retrieve my pistol. Seconds later, with gun in hand and seven bullets in the clip, I began to knock on the doors of my three immediate neighbors. Everyone was locked up tight and everything was silent and frightening. I turned to go up to the third floor, just before I heard the crash of glass below me. The growl alerted me to the fact that the assailant was back.

  I ran up to the next floor. The four doors to the four apartments were all locked and no one responded to me banging on their doors. It was, in fact, 3:30 AM. They should all be asleep, but all this noise should have awakened Peter and Janice. They are late night people. Angelia and Marcus have two small dogs. The animals should be barking. And, Lars and Bill are always up late night playing their video game systems.

     Where the hell was everyone?

  ‘OK,’ I whispered to myself. ‘I’m on my own right now.’

  I pressed myself against the back wall. I was facing the stairwell looking down toward the bottom of the steps. I could hear the man shambling up toward my location, moving foreword step by step. And then I saw him and I could not contain my horror any longer. I let out a whimper as I took aim at that which should not be possible.

  His back had been snapped at the waist. His torso was twisted to the right side at an impossible angle. Black blood-like substance leaked from his smashed in mouth and nose to leave a trail behind him on the guard rail. His soulless black eyes were trained on me… and it was coming for me!

  At that moment in time, I really didn’t think about what I was doing. I just pointed the barrel of my pistol at the center of the man’s forehead and fired off three rounds into his head. He instantly dropped to the ground and stopped moving.

  I approached him slowly and cautiously. I kicked him in the broken shoulder bone area. It was confirmed… this man was dead. And that blood was as black and as thick as molasses. And he smelled of old decay and rotted flesh mixed together. I had seen enough! It was time to call the police.

  But there were no police to answer my calls. I learned quickly that I was on my own!

  Just before I began to descend the stairs to go back to the second floor and my apartment, I heard a scratching at the doors around me. The scratching quickly became louder before changing to pounding. Something was now trying to escape the apartments around me. NOW I’m done with this scenario!

***

  My once beautiful world has fallen apart. Something unknown to my comprehension has destroyed civilization by killing practically everybody… before changing most of the dead into mindless walking things that hunt the living to kill them in horrible ways. Is this the zombie apocalypse that has captured the imaginations of so many writers over the years? Or, has god decided that mankind has outlived his usefulness on this planet and the time for complete violent genocide is at hand! I don’t know the answers, but I can use my general knowledge as an outdoors man to survive this madness and track down as many living humans as possible… especially, doctors and scientists.

  It is now two year later, after my first violent encounter with the violent flesh eating undead, and I am proud of the fact that I have helped to rescue twenty-seven medical doctors, 21 nurses and thirty-one scientist, among the other 212 living people I have helped to find shelter, and quarantine, in the fortress that is now Wake Medical Center here in Raleigh -- our huge fortress of solitude that has served us very well! The dead can’t get in and we mostly don’t want to get out!

  And when I do periodically go on the hunt for more living humans, I always encounter hoards of the living dead. And as I mow through them on the way to my final destinations… I always end up asking them all this answer-less question:

“HOW MANY TIMES MUST I  KILL YOU BEFORE YOU DIE?”

SAM