Humanity has become a hunted species. Survival means banding together against a global, evolving zombie threat. For one conflicted group, including a disgraced police officer, a ruthless mafia hitman, battle-hardened soldiers and traumatized civilia...
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AUTHOR'S NOTE:
While I was in the middle of this biweekly chapter of our saga, featuring a never-before seen group of characters, a Wattpad contest caught my eye. "...And Then There Were Zombies!" is an origin story of sorts, detailing the moment in a character's life before they pick up a weapon to begin dealing with the zombie apocalypse. It posed the perfect opportunity to write a more comprehensive backstory for the protagonist of this chapter's tale, Patricia Tatum. The short story, "Patty's Punishment," highlights the traumatic events leading up to her involvement with Stanley Deeks and his group of hot rod enthusiast pals.
You'll find it available on Wattpad from my profile page or at the following address (for your convenience, I'll include a clickable link in the comments section):
On the day the world ended, fifteen year-old Patricia Tatum fell in with her older brother, Mitchell, and his gearhead, twenty-something year-old friends. Their group primarily consisted of rowdy, rebellious preppers clinging desperately to their high-octane glory days. After two weeks of living on the road with them like a rock groupie, she still felt out of place among them.
She and her friends used to mock Mitch's car crowd with their mullets and obsession with hot rods and heavy metal music. Nobody was laughing now. Her girlfriends were gone, either dead or worse, and her brother's former boss and best friend, Stanley Deeks, had become the man with the plan.
Stan's plan, which he was keen to share in exhausting detail at the slightest provocation, came from a lifetime of zombie lore filling his skull. Patty sometimes wondered how he managed to find room for it in there, crammed in along with decades of song lyrics and intimate knowledge of every nut and bolt that kept his motorized girlfriend on the road.
They were headed east, towards the ocean. Another of her brother's friends, Donny "Dozer" McGraw, spent a few months working on his dad's fishing trawler. During that time, he picked up a basic understanding of how to operate boats. Stan cooked up the idea of grabbing a fishing boat, filling its hold with supplies, and living out the rest of the apocalypse on some island somewhere. Maybe Nantucket or Martha's Vineyard. Some place classy.
Personally, Patty thought his plan was chock full of shit. She didn't relish the thought of finding herself trapped on a tiny patch of land in the path of hurricanes, or hemmed in by solid ice once winter set in. The prospect of being the only female in an isolated commune full of horny old men, most of whom spent their best years thumbing their noses at morality, didn't sound that appealing to her, either. She was only along for the ride for one reason.
Presently, that reason groaned in pain in the back seat of Stan's vintage Camaro.
Her brother always did have the worst luck. When he was seventeen, he got himself expelled from school for carrying a concealed weapon, despite his repeated claims that he forgot to remove the knife from his backpack after a weekend fishing trip with his pals. A year later, he ended up doing a short stint behind bars after cops spotted several joints on the floor while ticketing his car for illegal parking.
