• Zombies. Just the word used to send shivers down my spine. I watched so many movies and played so many games. It was fun to imagine a post apocalyptic era where man eating cannibalistic creatures roamed. It was all fun and games you know? That was before everything went to hell. Not so fun anymore when your neighbours and friends are trying to devour your flesh. Zombies. The word still sends shivers down my spine but for a completely different reason now. Because out there the world is full of them. Rotting, hungry undead that roam what is left of the world in a never-ending quest to feed upon the living. But I’m getting ahead of myself. My name is TJ and this is my story.
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    I remember when it all began. I was just your average teenager. My senior year at high school had just ended. My friends and I were all going our separate ways at the end of the summer but we had until the end to party and live it up. Back then I thought my life was pretty messed up. I had a brother who was doing so many different kinds of drugs that if you tested his blood you would have found that it was more drug than blood. I had a mother who was anorexic. Always starving herself to achieve her dream of being super skinny and attractive. I had a dad who didn’t give two shits about us. And I had a girlfriend who treated me like I was some pet. To be controlled and always at her beck and call. God I miss those days. My name as I said before is TJ. I was just an average teenager. I am 6.5 and blonde. Used to live in South Africa but moved to the good ol’ sunshine state of California for my freshmen year of high school. I don’t know how it really began. Most people think it was some sort of virus created in a lab that got out and spread. Some people think it was the next stage in evolution. I mean the dead literally live forever. Anyways I was driving home from visiting my girlfriend one morning. It was about two-thirty am in the sleepy town of Moraga. It is one of those towns for rich white kids whose parents have too much money. It’s nickname was Boraga because there was literally nothing to do there. Anyways at two am it’s pretty sleepy. Only a cop car here and there on patrol. I was driving home keeping my eye out for any deer stupid enough to wander in the road. I won’t lie to you, I was pretty tired but what happened next woke me faster than anything ever had before. A huge stag bounded across the road quick as a flicker. I was so busy looking at it that I didn’t notice the thing chasing it. Too late I slammed on the breaks. My car skidded into the dark shape chasing the deer and made a loud thud. The shape rolled up my front screen and over the roof of the car. I lurched forward in my seat. The seatbelt pulling tightly across my chest. I sat there for a moment trying to catch my breath. Until then I had never been in an accident before. My breaths were hard and shallow. I unclipped my seatbelt and turned around to peer out behind my car. A hulking shape was lying out there and didn’t seem to be moving.
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    I can’t explain to you why I didn’t immediately jump out of my car to inspect the damage. I was scared. Somehow I knew that something weird was going on. Slowly I reached for the door handle and opened my door. The cold morning air rushed in giving me the chills. It was so cold my goose bumps had goose bumps. My foot found the gravel of the road underneath me. It felt hard and solid. I walked around to the front of my car. Every step was so loud it made my heart skip a beat. The hood of the car had a huge dent in it. The dent was big and would be impossible to hide from my parents. I decided to check out what I had hit. Cautiously I made my way to the rear of my car. Illuminated in the red glow of my brake lights was what looked like a mountain lion. I couldn’t believe it at first. Of all the animals to run over I had the luck to run over a mountain lion. I got closer. It was definitely dead. Then I noticed something weird. It stunk. Not just a little bit but like something that you drive past on the side of the road that has been dead for days stunk. Then I saw it’s head. It was no mountain lion. It was a dog. A labrador to be exact. But I had never seen a lab that size. Strange thing too was that it had huge chunks missing out of it’s side. I could see the ribs were exposed in some areas. I was pretty sure my car hadn’t done that damage. Needless to say I hopped back in my car and drove home. I stumbled into bed and prayed that it was just a dream. The next morning when I woke up and walked outside and saw the dent in my car plain as day I knew it was no dream. Over the next few days reports of animal attacks made the local news. The newspapers warned of a possible rabies outbreak. God they were wrong. So wrong.