The Zombie Virus (Book 1) by Paul Hetzer

all too familiar with.
    I unholstered the Beretta and raised it
toward her in a two handed grip. Her distorted face was a blur. I
focused on the front sight and pulled the trigger twice, one shot
rang out and the slide locked back. The Loony dropped in its tracks
as the bullet tore through its throat and out the back of its
spine.
    I triggered the mag release and swiftly
heeled another one in the open slot, cursing myself for not
changing mags after the last encounter. I couldn’t overlook these
types of details – it would get us killed.
    My wife must have heard the truck arrive and
was out the door and running toward me with her arms outstretched.
Jeremy was close behind. Both of them carried rifles. I enfolded my
family in my arms and sobbed along with them. I brushed my wife’s
long auburn hair back from her face and kissed her deeply.
    “We can’t stay out here,” I said. I reached
down and put my arm around my boy, hugging him tightly to me. He
was getting big enough that I could barely lift him off his
feet.
    “What are we going to do, Papa?” he asked
wiping at the tears with the back of his hand and hoping I hadn’t
seen them.
    “Let’s get in the house and talk about it.” I
gathered them up and herded them toward the door.
    “I didn’t know you were going to stop and
truck shop on the way home,” Holly said in jest when she saw the
pickup.
    “I couldn’t pass up the deal, and it’s owner
financing,” I winked at her.
    “I’m so thankful you’re home,” Holly cried in
my ear when the door closed behind us. “How bad is it out
there?”
    I took my briefcase off of my shoulder and
set it on the floor. “It’s about as bad as you can imagine. I think
the world that we have known is gone forever.”
    We walked to the kitchen where she examined
me from head to toe, taking in the blood splatters on my torn
trousers and shirt. “Are you injured?”
    I kicked off my remaining loafer. “I don’t
think so. That blood’s from the infected I fought with. I need to
get out of this stuff and wash up. I don’t think the blood’s still
hot but we can’t take the chance.”
    I had Jeremy get a trash bag from under the
sink and soon I was standing in just my underwear while we bagged
my ruined clothes. I told Jeremy to keep an eye out through the
windows in case the horde of Loonies found their way here through
the woods and he went off with a serious expression on his young
face to carry out his assignment. Holly followed me into the
bathroom to help me clean up.
    The sun was setting. We had survived another
day.

    We spent the evening gathering the remaining
supplies and piling them up on the inside of the garage with those
that Holly had already put together. We had eight military
patterned rifles, ranging in calibers from .22 long rifle to .308.
Two were class III short barreled AR15 M4 style rifles. We also had
four shotguns and several hunting and old military rifles, plus an
assortment of handguns. I only had one suppressor which I used on
several of the .22 rifles and handguns. For ammunition we had
sixteen 50 caliber ammo cans filled with various rounds for all our
weapons, about 2,000 rounds per weapon.
    From their display case I grabbed the two
authentic samurai swords that my grandfather had brought back from
the Pacific during WWII. We boxed up all of our pantry food along
with the buckets of emergency food we had stored. We emptied our
refrigerator/freezers into the couple of large coolers and topped
them with icepacks. We would unfortunately have to leave some
behind to rot.
    We put two cases of water along with several
cases of soda in the pile. We had clothes out at the farm,
nevertheless we packed a bag of travelling clothes for each of us.
We cleaned out all of our medical supplies, including prescriptions
and vitamins, along with Holly’s medical kit. We even boxed up our
canning supplies and spare jars.
    It was a huge load, however, I was confident
the full sized bed of the pickup