The Turned

1: October 7th, 2023 - 10:28 a.m.

The large Jeep rolled quietly down the street, only making the faint noise that most tires do when they're on asphalt.

Said asphalt was cracked, bruised, and, for the most part, in an unfit condition to be considered a main road.

But virtually all of Seattle's roads had been damaged by the shockwave which had swept through the city. Fortunately, the nuclear fallout that resulted from the three missiles had only created fatal conditions within about a twenty-mile radius of the epicenter, which happened to be at the "heart" of the U.S., considered to be Independence, Kansas.

Unfortunately, trace amounts of fallout had been spread around the entire country, with some even making it into the lower Canadian provinces and both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.

Jake quietly took this all in while he pulled the steering wheel, turning into the Capitol Hill neighborhood. Several houses had been obliterated from the shockwave, and even most of the ones that had survived the blast were still heavily damaged. None looked like they could reliably house life.

Will was able to stare out at the ruined suburbia, as he wasn't trying to drive a battle-ready Jeep down a damaged road.

It was still hard (at least for him) to grasp that less than two hours ago, three nuclear missiles had smashed into the middle of America, and now the whole nation was either cracked or turned into a green hellscape.

But at least they were still alive.

Jake turned down another deserted street and quietly turned his head towards Will.

"Would you like to, uh, pop a disk into the radio?"

Will took out a sleeve of music disks from the glove compartment and slid it open. He hit the eject button and asked, "What do you wanna listen to, now that we're kind of in hell?"

Jake shook his head slightly. "Surprise me."

"Cool." Will flicked through and took out a Bob Marley disk. Catch a Fire was the album, and as the tray slurped up the disk, he tapped the shuffle button. 400 Years came on, which was the only real noise echoing through the streets.

Other than that, though, both boys kept their mouths shut as the Jeep crept through town. What was there to say, anyway? The United States, as they knew it, was now turned into an apocalypse. Unless they were dreaming, or if this was all some sick prank, the nation had really become barren.

After some time, Jake and Will had gotten out of the city and were starting to enter the more rural area. That was around the time they saw something peculiar.

There was a tattered, bloodied figure stumbling down the street. Its movements were irregular, even unnatural, perhaps, but to the teenagers, not all of this information had yet seeped in.

Jake depressed the brake pedal until the Jeep had slowed to a drowsy crawl. About then, the human had turned around to show its face.

It wasn't a human. It was a zombie.

Jake slammed on the brakes, and the Jeep finally stopped in its tracks. The zombie had now started to walk towards the duo.

Will burst out before Jake could think of anything sensible. "Run that bastard over!" he screamed.

Jake stared wide-eyed at him. "What? I'm not running that... thing over!"

Will retorted back. "No! That's a zombie, can't you see? Run it over now!"

Upon Will calling the thing a zombie, Jake tensed up a bit, and his foot began to move towards the accelerator. When the zombie began to jog towards the Jeep, Jake finally got the urge to kill this being.