Z Walkers: Sara - Episode 2: Z Walkers, #2

By Luke Shephard

Episode 2 of the Z Walkers series! 

It started off a day like any other, as these kinds of days always do. Sara, personal trainer, almost makes it to lunch before chaos strikes her upscale gym. Instead of meeting with an afternoon client, she finds herself face-to-face with what she can only describe as rabid cannibals. The whole first floor of the building quickly becomes a bloodbath, and she hides away in her office, hoping this is just a bad dream. 

Unfortunately, it's anything but. When silence descends, Sara realizes she's not only trapped in a building with flesh-hungry people, but her one shot at escape, the nearby parking lot, is crawling with them too. 

The only upside is that she doesn't have to tackle it alone. Fellow trainer Gary emerges from his hiding place in her moment of despair, and together they try to attain a human's three most basic needs: food, water, and shelter. 

But she could have never predicted finding what she'd always taken for granted to be so difficult--or deadly. 

Will she make it out alive? Or will she become a meal for whatever’s out there…?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Our Pack Press
• Release date: Jan 19, 2016
• ISBN: 9781516319886

Book preview

Z Walkers: Sara – Episode 2

It started off a day like any other, as these kinds of days always do. Sara, personal trainer, almost makes it to lunch before chaos strikes her upscale gym. Instead of meeting with an afternoon client, she finds herself face-to-face with what she can only describe as rabid cannibals. The whole first floor of the building quickly becomes a bloodbath, and she hides away in her office, hoping this is just a bad dream.

Unfortunately, it's anything but. When silence descends, Sara realizes she's not only trapped in a building with flesh-hungry people, but her one shot at escape, the nearby parking lot, is crawling with them too.

The only upside is that she doesn't have to tackle it alone. Fellow trainer Gary emerges from his hiding place in her moment of despair, and together they try to attain a human's three most basic needs: food, water, and shelter.

But she could have never predicted finding what she'd always taken for granted to be so difficult—or deadly.

Will she make it out alive? Or will she become a meal for whatever’s out there...?

Sara – Episode 2

One hears all sorts of sounds working at a gym: grunts coming from the weight area, groans from the weigh-in scale, and pants from the treadmill. Screaming wasn’t an especially common sound. In fact, Sara had never heard screaming—multiple screams, actually—in the four years that she’d worked for Fit Fresh, and she’d had some pretty terrible clients. They’d been sour-faced and sullen, lazy and irritable, but never had any of her workouts produced screams.

No one’s workout routine should make a client scream.

So, one can imagine her horror when she heard them, all the screams of varying pitches and volumes, echoing from the main floor below her office. She jumped back from her clipboard, in the midst of scribbling in new weights and times for her 4-o’clock appointment—Mr. Lowdry, fifty-six, liked to look at her boobs.

At first, she wondered if they were delighted screams. Her Fit Fresh location was in a well-off area of the city, and it wasn’t a rare to see celebrities and reality TV stars occasionally making an appearance when their personal trainers were out sick. Just last month she’d had to cancel her whole day to help a big name news anchor for that very reason: the woman was insanely in-shape for someone her age, so it wasn’t a complete loss.

But the longer she listened, the more acutely aware she was that these weren’t screams of delight—they were screams of horror. Panic. Fear. Her palms moistened with cool sweat as she crept to her office door, peering out the small window and nibbling her lower lip.

Was it a heist? The gym made a lot of money—enough to get her into a penthouse suite on the outskirts of the neighborhood on a personal trainer’s salary—but they didn’t keep much cash around. It was all electronic transactions. The company wasn’t involved in any political scandal either, nothing that would encourage masked gunmen to take the building hostage.

But then again, what did those lunatics need to take over a building? Probably not much, given they had a screw loose somewhere up there.

When the screams started to lose some of their luster, Sara grabbed her phone and crept out of her office, bending low and trying to stay out of sight. The second floor overlooked the first, and was usually lined with women using the dozens of ellipticals and bikes, while the first floor was more for weight training.

The few gym-goers from the second floor seemed to have scattered before she did, and most of her co-workers’ offices were dark—they’d be on the floor, like she could have been. Swallowing hard, her throat dry, Sara made it to the edge of the stairs, ones with spotless glass railings, and it was there she saw the cause of all the noise.

It was like there was a riot on the first floor. A bloody, violent riot. Her trembling hand covered her mouth, watching people rip each other apart. Many seemed to be trying to get to the main doors, but they were blocked by bloody-faced people, their hands outstretched and groping for contact.

They all looked sick. They had to be—a woman had just pushed a teen down and dug her teeth into his cheek, his limbs flailing as he screamed. The receptionist—she’d just been hired two months ago—had climbed on top of a multi-purpose weight machine, shrieking as two red-faced attackers clung to the hem of her stretchy yoga pants.

Oh my god, Sara breathed. Something clattered behind her, and she whirled around, eyes wide. An elderly woman who used the elliptical religiously five days a week had scrambled behind a garbage can—it looked like she was crying. They made eye contact, and Sara brought a finger to her lips, willing her to be quiet and stay out of sight. That familiar grey hair bobbed up and down, and she seemed to be trying to make herself as small as possible.

Okay. Police. Now.

She hoped that if people couldn’t get out of the building, they found safety in the lower levels. Below the main floor was a yoga studio, lockers, racquetball courts, and the entrance to the pool. Plenty of places to hide until the police arrived.

Unfortunately, just as her shaking fingers started to dial the number on her sleek new cell phone, one of the blood-covered people from below started to climb the staircase. He did so a little awkwardly, like his limbs weren’t his own anymore, but when his gaze found her, Sara’s blood ran cold. It was like looking into the eyes of the Devil himself: uncaring, unfeeling—dead.

In her haste to get up, she tripped over the heel of her trainers and stumbled back onto her butt. She whimpered and scrambled to her feet, hands so sweaty that she almost dropped her phone. While there was plenty of places to hide downstairs and beyond, the upper floor wasn’t much more than a lookout perch with all its bikes and ellipitcals—and staff offices. Rather than try to make a run for the emergency exit on the far side, Sara made a beeline for her office, imagining a locked door to be safer than an unknown stairwell.

And she could practically hear that... man on her heels. Groaning, seething, panting, his heavy footfalls pounded in her ears as she ran. The door practically fell open when she plowed through it, and she slammed it shut as hard as she could, fumbling over the locks.

Crouching in front of the window, she watched for signs of her follower, only to feel tears prickling her eyes when she realized he’d found a new target.

Edna. That was her name. They’d laughed about something or other last week... The old woman kept pushing herself behind the metallic garbage can as the man encroached on her, joined by another limping figure from the first floor.

She shook her head, biting down so hard on her lips that she tasted blood. Edna couldn’t die like that—everyone needed a fighting chance.

So, against her better judgment, Sara unlocked the door and yanked it open.

Come here! she called, beckoning the woman over. She could probably make it if she ran. Come here! The door locks!

But she didn’t move. Edna sat there, waiting for death, and Sara slammed the door shut, knowing a lost cause she saw it. Flicking off the lights, she sank to the floor and crawled under her desk, hands over her ears, tears streaming down her face.

And waited for the screaming to stop.

***

Complete and utter silence in the gym was just as unnerving as the screaming. The only time her twenty-four-hour facilities were absolutely silent were between the hours of three and four in the morning: even night owls weren’t keen on working out during that hour. Otherwise, there was always some sort of sound—machines beeping, people chatting, music pumping. Sara had tuned out all the racket years ago when she found it hard to focus on a client session, but now, hidden beneath her desk, she wanted nothing more than some of those familiar sounds.

It was so still that she could hear her ears ringing. Hours had crawled by, filled with shrieks and cries and pleas, and then it all stopped. Nothing had pressed up against her office window for a while now, and she’d quieted her own sobbing too.

Inching out from under the desk, she crawled toward the door on shaky limbs and peered through the window. Blood. Blood everywhere. No bodies, though she gagged when she saw a torn-off ear sitting by one of the nearby ellipticals.

As secure as her office felt, she knew she couldn’t stay there forever. One of those... people had seen her hide in there—they were bound to come back for her sometime. So, she grabbed a fully loaded stapler, then opened the door as quietly as she could.

The creaky hinges made her skin erupt in little bumps, but she pushed through, shuffling out and dropping to her knees. No need to make herself a bigger and more obvious target.

Rather than heading for the stairs, she hurried across the room to the windows overlooking the parking lot below, crawling behind machines to stay hidden. It