Zombies! Rising from the Dead

Chapter One:

My name is Bruce. I had a very normal
, everyday
life until seven months
ago.
I lived in Barkley, a rural town in the middle of nowhere. It was the kind of town where
everyone knows everyone else and no one's private business is private for very long. A tractor
pulls out in front of you on the highway and you know the person on the tractor because he's
also the towns' pastor. The sheriff is the guy you drink beer and go fishing with on the
weekends, and
your
lucky if the only gas station in town happens to be open on the day you run
out because the next station is thirty miles away. You know the kind of town I'm talking about.

I had a nice home buried back in the country just a few miles outside of town. You head out of
town hang a left and drive about five miles out on Cider road; a long winding gravel road that
takes you out and drops you in the middle of nowhere. My place was a red brick, ranch style
house on a few acres of land. It was about a mile off the road and shielded by a host of large
Oaks and Maples, I
d
idn't have a neighbor for miles. It was completely isolated and I
did
rather

enjoy
that isolation, why? Because I didn't care for people; now
p
erhaps that was because of
my line of work but I will get to that later.

I enjoyed the simple life, when I wasn't working I spent a lot of time outside. Yard work
was one of my biggest past times, I loved being outside. The sun and sky are so bright and blue
in the country, that's something you don't get in the cities with all those tall
buildings,
the traffic
and the smog---out here in the country it’s clean and crisp. The warm country air fills your nose
with the familiar scent of honeysuckle and freshly mowed grass. I love the smell of fresh
mowed grass,
nothing says summer better.
The feel of fresh soil between my fingers, cool
to
the touch, earthy, clean and pure.

Night time was cool, dark and peaceful. When the trees mask the sun and the light fades
into the night, its total darkness. You can see everything in the night time sky here, people in
the city just think of that moon-lit sky as just being a few of stars and a big white orb we call
t
he moon, but
it’s
so much more than that! From here you can see the Milky Way, swirls and
hints of other galaxies, hosts of shooting stars as well as sister planets like Mars and Venus.
Your
mind goes on an adventure as you begin to think about all the possibilities out there. There is a whole universe to gaze upon which you would
never
be able to see in the city
through all of its street lights, sirens and harsh neon signs.

My home was my oasis, my place of refuge. I could go outside do my yard work and get
all the fresh air anyone could want, get enough sun that my skin was beet red by the time I
finished. Then in the evening sit outside and enjoy that wondrous nighttime sky.

Inside was no different; a refuge. I had worked many years to get it that way. When I
first bought the house it had been abandoned for a number of years and the tale-tale signs of
neglect had started to set in; I saved it. Torn shingles, hanging g
utters and decaying frame work
were just some of the problems to be fixed; but I saw promise in the old property. The
renovation process took several years and I had done every bit of it myself, except for the
electrical which Rick did, being a certified electrician and all. I felt a great sense of
a
ccomplishment in what I had done, but that was a long time ago and renovations had been
finished for many years now and were nothing more than distant memories.

One of the things I most enjoyed about my little oasis was the basement. In-ground,
surrounded on all sides by earth save one wall with open access
to
the outside patio. Think of
it as a cave in terms of shelter, quite useful during tornado season. I had updated it so that all
my little “toys” would be down there.

Upstairs was very much for company and appearances, in terms of design and
decorating. All the things you would expect to find in the average person’s home. It was bland
with off-white paint and stuffy, clichéd paintings of waterfowl covering the walls, a dinette set
for entertaining guests at dinner time. Further back three bedrooms all finely made up with
mint condition, seventies era furnishings. An inn table and a lamp adorned either side of the
bed, a dresser and of course large bulky queen size beds that saw little use other than by the
occasional passing dust bunny. It was all very adult, proper and much like what you would find
in a hotel. The upstairs wasn't me at all, it was a formality, something setup to appease the
delicate sensibilities and palate
of visitors and the infrequent over-night
guest.

Downstairs, ah now.....that was very much me. The basement I mentioned earlier;
finished to be a home theater for certain. It
co
ntained all the varied aspects of my own
personality, the outward physical manifestation
s
of my own mind. Opening the door to the stairs
leading down, there was a striking difference between what was to be found upstairs and what
lied just beneath your feet. As you descended those heavy wooden stairs
, movie
memorabilia
lined the walls on either side. As you entered the basement and rounded the stairs, a pool table
and an old arcade machine sat off to the right. It’s one that I had salvaged from an old
restaurant years ago. The walls were covered with finely framed posters from all my favorite
films. A finished wooden bookshelf which
held my
DVD’s had been built-in under the stair
casing. Further back in a short dead-end hallway, there was a rack which held video game
consoles and behind the home theater sat a dark mahogany bar where company could sit on

50's era bar stools and enjoy a meal or drink before watching a movie. Scattered throughout on
various stands and shelves were all assorted types of toys and collectables, items I had either
picked up in later years or that I had held onto since childhood. In the entire house the

basement
was the room I spent the most time in. (Funny that it should end up as the room that
eventually saved us all).

I had remodeled the house to be as self-sustaining as it could. Years ago we had a
devastating ice storm which crippled the area and I wasn't spared its wrath by any means. Like
most people at that time everything I had was powered by electricity; the heat, the lights, even

the
cooking stove. It’s
funny;
you just don't realize how dependent you are on some things until
they are taken away and when the power failed I was stranded, helplessly at the mercy of
Mother Nature.

We were the last to get our electric service restored. Fourteen days without heat, warm
water or any modern conveniences. Those lucky enough to have generators were able to hold
out, but most simply couldn't hold out for such a long duration.
There was no place to get anything, all the stores and gas stations were closed,
every
-
thing had been impacted, imagine a complete breakdown of state and local government—if that's possible. Those who weren't prepared found themselves struggling through a life or
death situation, I was one of them. Finally after four days of no power,
constant sub-zero temperatures, and little to no
, I packed up my F-150 and on a quarter tank of gas I headed north, last word was
that it hadn't been affected as bad what with only the fringe of the front scraping by them, yet it

was
still a good sixty to seventy miles away.

I traveled for almost two hours and the roads were terrible. Everything was bathed in a
glistening, sparkling sheet of ice. A trip
that should have taken an hour and a half took three. I
had to be extra cautious, if a tire blew or if I lost control and ended up in a ditch here would be
no one to come to my aid, no one to call because even the cell phone towers were down. I
would be on my own.

Luckily I came to a town called Cape Haverstock where I was able to rent a motel room
and get a hot shower. They escaped the full brunt of the storm and had power restored a days
ago. No one knew or wouldn't have dared playing the odds on trying to travel; I had lucked out
and managed to get a room.

I vowed after the ice storm that I would never be dependent on anyone else again for
anything. Over the course of the next few years I installed gas appliances. Every winter brought
the threat of bad weather and reminded me time and time again why I was upgrading, funny
thing too as in the minds of many
gas
appliances would have been considered old fashioned
and
outdated
, but in this instance it made perfect sense.

I put in a wood stove for emergency heat, with enough wood to last a whole winter if it
came to it. A gas stove for cooking and gas water heater. I even had a large gas generator
installed
(we won't even go into that debacle!). In my pantry I stocked up on bottled water and
can goods. It was expensive endeavor, but now I had enough supplies to last a lifetime should
anything EVER
happen
again. I was determined to be prepared for the long haul
,
and it took

roughly
three years to get it all done and setup but by the end I was ready for just about anything
(or so I thought).