Surviving Beyond the Zombie Apocalypse by Jeffrey Littorno Page B

suppose that familiarity not only bred contempt but disinterest as well. The consequence of that disinterest had now come back to me. I turned left, which I believed to be the direction of the store.
         The street before me was narrow and lined with shabby store fronts. I saw a couple of shells squatting over the remains of what had probably been a dog. They seemed to be uninterested in me. I felt slightly irritated that between a dog’s carcass and me, the shells preferred the dog. No accounting for taste.
         Such a bizarre thinking process made me realize that ever since I had been away from Christina, Taylor, and Kat, my thoughts had become twisted. The reason for this became immediately clear. When I was with the others, they gave me a reason for going on, a sense of purpose. I needed to protect them. Everything I did had to be directed toward keeping them safe. Even in a world as crazy as this, having a sense of purpose proved crucial. This was the only thing that made continuing to breathe worth the effort. I had never been a high achiever. In fact, I’d chuckled at those people so driven that they spent every free moment seeking ways by which to succeed. Their constant focus on the future meant that they never allowed themselves time to enjoy the present.
         Ironically, in this world, where the present might be all that we had, I had the task of protecting the future in the form of young people. With such a clear purpose, I had no time to get distracted by meditations on the absurdities of the situation. That was what I needed to keep in mind, focus on the purpose of my action without getting distracted by the surrounding events. Of course, when the surrounding events included dead people moving around, being a little distracted seemed excusable. However, if I hoped to get back to the others, I could not afford to be getting distracted.
         With this in mind, I focused on driving.
         As  soon as the engine turned over, the shells turned their attention in my direction. They did not immediately move. It seemed as though it took their brains a few seconds before the idea of something moving registered and a reaction could be made. The shells had simply stood and then begun moving toward me as I shifted the car into reverse. Not being used to backing up using only side mirrors, I started slowly and carefully. 
         Things changed when I glanced through the windshield to see the shells now moving quickly toward the van. I pressed down on the gas pedal and was almost immediately shaken by a bang of hitting something. The repeated slapping on the side of the van followed. Out of the passenger window, I saw numerous shells moving towards me from surrounding buildings. A glance out my window revealed the same thing.
         Surprisingly, a calm filled me as a single idea screamed through my brain: If I do not get out of here right now, I never will.
         My foot slammed the accelerator to the floor. It took a second for the van to react before it sprang backward through the mob of shells. The slapping stopped only to be replaced by a series of thuds that rocked the campervan. Once beyond the shells, I spun the wheel to the left and nearly succeeded in tipping the van onto its side. Somehow all four wheels stayed on the ground, and I headed away from the crowd of shells.
         I watched in the side mirror as the shells got smaller. Just as I started to feel better, I looked forward to see more shells gathering. One at a time, the things posed no problem, but a group of them could stop me dead. I smiled at the bad pun.
         Obviously, the only way the van would be able to make it down the street and back to the store was by breaking this large group in smaller groups. I stopped the van in the middle of the street staring at the shells and considering how to break up the group. It did not take long for the answer.
         As I had noted long ago, some of the shells were