Chapter 5 – My First Zombie Kill Wasn’t Pretty

BANG! CRASH!

The heavy steel storage door finally gives up the ghost, bursting inward off its rusted hinges as the six-foot shelving unit packed with canned pumpkin puree topples sideways across the concrete floor like a timbered redwood.

"Oh, marvelous! Welcome to Zinnia’s House of Pain, please wipe your rotting feet on the canned squash before attempting to eat my face!" I yell at the top of my lungs, vaulting onto an overturned wooden pallet while gripping my ten-inch serrated chef’s knife with both white-knuckled hands.

Three rotting zombies tumble into the cramped storage room in a tangled heap of torn winter coats, blackened fingernails, and holiday tinsel. The nearest one—a gaunt, grey-skinned man wearing a crooked plastic reindeer headband and a blood-soaked supermarket apron—scrambles upright first, lunging straight at my shins with a wet, rattling hiss.

"Back off, Rudolph, your nose isn't red—that’s just dried arterial spray!" I shout, swinging my chef’s knife in a wild horizontal arc.

The serrated blade slices cleanly across the creature’s collarbone, burying itself three inches deep into its shoulder—and sticking completely fast in the bone.

"Wait a second! Give me my knife back, you cheap corpse!" I roar, yanking desperately on the plastic handle while the zombie doesn't even flinch, lunging forward and snapping its jagged yellow teeth less than two inches from my nose.

Letting go of the stuck knife before my fingers get bitten off, I drop straight into a panicked crouch, grab a jagged, four-foot steel crossbar snapped off the collapsed shelving unit, and swing it upward with every ounce of terror-fueled adrenaline in my body.

CRACK!

The heavy steel bar slams squarely beneath the reindeer zombie’s chin, snapping its head backward, before I bring the jagged metal tip crashing straight down onto the crown of its skull like a medieval warhammer.

SPLORCH!

With a sickening wet crunch that makes my stomach perform a triple backflip, the steel rod pierces straight through the creature’s skull. The zombie’s milky white eyes roll upward, its jaws slacken instantly, and it collapses onto the concrete floor in a motionless, twitching heap.

"Aha! Brain damage! Just like my ex-fiancé, except this one actually shuts up when you hit it!" I holler triumphantly, yanking the dripping metal bar free with a loud gag as the other two zombies untangle themselves from the spilled pumpkin cans and lunge forward together.

"Sorry, boys, store policy says one idiot per aisle!" I bark, sweeping my jagged steel shelf leg across the floor at ankle height.

The heavy iron bar clips both zombies squarely across their shins, sending them crashing face-first onto the sticky concrete in a glorious pileup. Before either monster can push itself back up, I plant one boot firmly on the nearest creature’s shoulder blades and drive the sharp metal end of the shelf leg straight down into the base of its skull, then immediately pivot and deliver the exact same treatment to its neighbor.

Silence falls abruptly over the tiny storage room, broken only by my ragged, wheezing breaths and the faint hum of the dying fluorescent light overhead.

"Three down," I pant loudly, leaning heavily on my improvised metal spear while staring down at the three motionless corpses pooled in dark, viscous sludge. "And I didn't even chip a nail. Take that, overpriced Pilates classes!"

A cheerful blue holographic screen chimes merrily beside my nose, cutting straight through the gloom:[SURVIVAL MISSION 1 COMPLETED: FIRST INFECTED ELIMINATED. EXTRACT ZOMBIE CORE FROM CRANIAL CAVITY TO CLAIM REWARD.]

"Excuse me? You want me to stick my bare hands inside a cracked zombie skull like I’m fishing for the prize at the bottom of a Cracker Jack box?!" I yell at the floating blue text, wrinkling my nose in pure, unadulterated disgust. "Do I look like a forensic pathologist to you, System?!"

[WARNING: TEMPORAL ENERGY AT 18%. FAILURE TO ABSORB ZOMBIE CORE WILL RESULT IN PERMANENT STRANDING IN TIMELINE ZERO-ALPHA.]

"Fine! Fine, you win, you manipulative little hologram!" I groan loudly, wrapping a clean white butcher apron snatched from a wall hook around my right hand like an oven mitt before crouching reluctantly beside the reindeer zombie.

Grimacing so hard my eyes water, I pry apart the ruined skull cavity with the tip of my metal bar until a tiny,marble-sized translucent crystal rolls out onto the concrete floor, pulsing faintly with a clean, pearly white light.

"Okay, honestly, for something that came out of a dead grocery clerk’s forehead, it’s actually kind of pretty," I mutter, scooping up the glowing crystal with my apron-wrapped hand and wiping it furiously against a dry cardboard box until not a single speck of grey sludge remains. "Here goes nothing—bottoms up, I guess?"

The moment I press the glowing crystal against my bare left palm, the pearl-white stone dissolves into liquid fire, shooting straight up my forearm like ten thousand volts of boiling acid.

"AAAHHH! WHAT THE HELL IS THIS—HOT! BURNING! YOU LITTLE LIAR!" I scream at the top of my lungs,dropping straight to both knees on the concrete floor as white-hot agony detonates inside my chest, spine, and fingertips simultaneously.

Every muscle fiber in my body feels like it is being shredded apart by tiny electric chainsaws and knitted back together twice as thick. My bones pop and crack like dry kindling in a bonfire, sweat pours down my forehead in freezing rivers, and I slam both fists onto the concrete floor so hard the slab cracks beneath my knuckles.

Ten agonizing seconds later, the searing pain vanishes as abruptly as it started, leaving behind a cool,humming surge of raw power thrumming through every vein in my body.

I slowly push myself upright, blinking away tears as I stare down at the spiderweb of cracks my fists just punched into solid concrete—without leaving a single bruise on my knuckles.

[CORE ABSORPTION COMPLETE. REWARD GRANTED: BASIC PHYSICAL ENHANCEMENT (STRENGTH, AGILITY, AND CELLULAR DURABILITY INCREASED BY 200%). RETURN ANCHOR STABILIZED: 45 MINUTES REMAINING.]

"Two hundred percent?!" I laugh out loud, grabbing a bent, solid-steel shelving bracket off the floor and snapping it cleanly in half between my thumbs like a dry breadstick. "Oh, Belladonna is going to cry real tears when she sees what I can do to her designer handbag collection now!"

CRASH-BOOM!

Before I can even celebrate my shiny new superhero muscles, a deafening explosion of shattering glass echoes from the main mall concourse outside, followed immediately by a chorus of dozens of guttural,shrieking roars vibrating through the supermarket walls.

"Oh, great," I shout toward the doorway, snatching my serrated chef’s knife out of the dead zombie’s shoulder with one effortless yank and raising my steel spear in the other hand. "Sounds like the second wave just arrived for the midnight clearance sale!"