Chapter 1: The nightmare begins

A nightmare. That’s what I thought to myself, standing there watching the last helicopter take off. This is an apocalyptic nightmare. To some, that’s what it was. The dead rising from the grave all over the U.S. everyone being evacuated to safe countries. Everyone except me. They thought I had been bitten, those idiots at the check station. Of course I hadn’t been, I had just been scraped up by others fighting their way to the helicopter. And now everyone, my friends, my family, my brother…
“Arrrgh!” I screamed towards the heavens. What have I done to deserve this? Was this some sort of karmic retribution for a past life? With nothing else but sadness and anger in my heart, I headed towards the only building in sight, the Cherryland mall.

I was about halfway through the food court when I was suddenly tackled from behind by a human-shaped figure. I thrashed about wildly, hoping to free myself from its clutches, when I realized that the body was warm! At the same moment I realized this, I heard a familiar voice say to me:
“Clarence?”
“Devon?” I said back, and I was welcomed with a hand to help me up, and which pulled me into a bone-crushing hug. I pulled out of it, and looked upon the face of my best friend, Devon. He was the same as when I last saw him, skinny, slightly taller than me, with short blond hair and glasses. Of course, the minute I saw him, the first question that popped into my head was,
“How come you’re here man?” his answer was basically the same as mine: he had been injured, not by the undead, but by innocent bystanders trying to get away. As I gave my explanation to why I was still here, I heard the automatic doors open. I turned to see nine bodies, all different sizes, standing there. At first I thought that they were zombies, and even thought about getting the heck out of there, but then they started running. Now, one thing I knew about zombies was that they can hardly walk, much less run. By the time I realized this, I was tackled yet again, this time by two people: Anthony and Eric. Devon was also tackled, by Anthony’s sister Sabrina, Tim, and Justin. The other four, Marcus, Ana, Amanda, and Samantha, just stood there smiling at us as we helped each other up. The back stories that followed were very strange. Anthony and Sabrina’s parents had said that they were “old enough to fend for themselves”, and left them behind. Amanda had the chance to leave, but she wouldn’t without Sabrina, so she stayed. Marcus had known that something needed to be done to stop the threat to mankind, so he decided to stay and “clean up”. Ana, Sam, and Eric were the last three people to be shipped out, but the helicopter that was coming to get them crashed. And Justin….. Well, Justin had slept in. nobody knew how Tim ended up there, and we didn’t care. After we heard everyone’s stories, we started looking around the mall for stuff we needed. My shirt was very ripped up, so I headed to Hot Topic to snatch a Venom T-shirt. We came back to the food court at lunch, and I made everyone hotdogs. As we were just starting to relax and chow down, we heard the doors open again, and saw more people come in. it took us a second to realize they had even come in, but then we heard the moaning, and we realized that these guys weren’t friendly. Then, Anthony voiced what everyone was thinking:
“Run. Now.” And run we did.


“Follow me!” I yelled to everyone. No one argued with me, so I lead them out the back way, and started looking for something. Meanwhile I could hear the zombies getting closer, so I tried to speed it up. Then, I found what I was looking for, just as Devon asked me
“What’re you looking for?”
“Get in.” I simply told everyone, for what I had been looking for was my dad’s black suburban. As everyone piled in, I heard moaning, and then a bloodcurdling scream. I turned to see Tim being overtaken by Zombies. I reached out to try and help him, but as I did so, Anthony, Devon, and the others pulled me into the car and shoved me into the front seat. As I started the car, I said to myself,
“Goodbye Tim.” Then I said to everyone,
“This isn’t over yet.”