#H1Z1 - Chapter 9

Automatic doors. All this time I'd been outside of the store, talking with my Son, getting the dogs out of the truck, loading my shotgun, calling 911 - all this time, and it just now hit me that they were automatic doors. All the front entrance doors - four sets - to the Wad-Mart were automatic. A motion sensor at the top triggered them. You simply needed to move in front of it.

Or stagger.

"Dad! Behind you!" Bill shouted as the dogs surged forward, hackles bristling and showing fierce snarls I never imagined my two goofy mutts were even capable of.

I whipped around, raising the shotgun to my shoulder just in time to see the remains of Marie lurch through the automatic door and stumble toward me.

"Don't come any closer, lady!" I shouted. My hackles, if I had any, were raised as well, and my flesh seemed to want to be somewhere else, goose-bumps instantly covering every inch of me. The voice in the back of my head was screeching now, tearing through my resolve to the forefront of my mind and refusing to be controlled. "Get back lady! Get away from us!"

Her eyes were so bloodshot they almost appeared red. A long string of saliva hung from one corner of her twisted mouth and she was actually gnashing her teeth - making chewing motions as she reached toward me. Her skin was white. I could see the branch-like tracery of veins through her eerily translucent skin. She was obviously dead, yet somehow walking. My brain raged at that, terror ripping the silence, or so I thought, with gut-wrenching screams.

Somehow, she managed a kind of half-hiss, half-moan and took another shuttering step.

I pulled the trigger of my gun.

Nothing happened.

Standing there, aghast, shocked, terrified, my mind quickly racing toward the precipice of abject terror, I almost didn't hear Bill's admonishment. "Safety, Dad! Take off the safety!"

It was too late. Marie was right in front of me, inside the 30-inch reach of the barrel of my skeet gun. She reached out, hands like claws hungrily trying to catch my shooting vest.

Call it reflexes. Call is survival instinct. Call it dumb, blind luck, but I managed to stave off the terror trying to peel itself out of my brain and run gibbering down the street for home and react.

I did the only thing I could. I swung the stock of the gun down from my shoulder and whipped it up in a sharp blow to her chin, knocking her head back with every ounce of force I could muster in so short an amount of time.

Her head shot back - too far back - and the momentum of my blow sent her sprawling backwards through the still open door, landing hard on the concrete pad beyond with a sickening crunch. I saw a pool of blood forming under her skull as her body writhed slowly through a sickening kind of death throe.

Then, her remains, her re-animated remains, seemed to collapse. She, no, it (I had to start thinking of them as 'it') cease to move altogether.

I had done it. I had killed my first zombie. How in the HELL was I going to deal with that when this was all over?

Bill's shout brought me back from this brief reverie. Why was he shouting, anyway? And why was I so detached all of a sudden?

It felt as though the air were made of gelatin rather than gasses as I turned toward my son and the dogs he was barely restraining.

Standing in front of the dogs, inches from their snarling, snapping jaws, was the second one. The second zombie from inside of the store. The man. Reaching - clawing for my son.

I didn't have to think this time. My finger snapped the safety off. I raised the shotgun and shot from the hip, aiming for center mass. I was to the right side of this second catastrophe, and was standing fairly even with the creature that threatened my son. Bill was clear of any shot, but the dogs weren't. No matter. This thing was not going to get my Son, I thought as I pulled the trigger.

At such short range, the tightly choked gun punched a hole deep into the side of the man - of what was left of the man. The force of the blow knocked it sideways onto the ground and it was close enough to the muzzle of the shotgun that it's shirt caught fire.

It writhed for a moment there on the ground before, astonishingly, beginning to lever its self up onto its knees, never losing sight of its target, my Son and our two dogs. But I had bought Bill the time he needed and somehow, I felt a flush of pride through the still gibbering terror which ran rampant through my mind as he dug his heels into the pavement and yanked the pair of savagely snarling animals back from the creature before them.

My shotgun was a semi-automatic, so I didn't have to pump it to chamber another round - it was already cocked and loaded. I raised it to my shoulder this time, taking aim for the center of the creature's chest and pulling the trigger again. It was sickening to watch as the shot ripped through its chest. It was blown back onto the ground again, but still, it writhed. Again, I shot it. Still it moved, clawing at the ground and trying to right its self so that it could pursue the child. Finally, I aimed for its head, something telling me that that would stop the creature. I pulled the trigger.