Journal of a South African Z: SOUTH AFRICAN ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE, #1

By Lee Herrmann

A mysterious outbreak has ravaged the country turning most of the rainbow nation into mindless, flesh-eating zombies. After two years hiding in their Pretoria home, 16 year-old Kon, along with his brother and father make the decision to journey across the country to Robben Island, rumoured to be a safe haven. 

Along the way they befriend other survivors, and face an unrecognizable new world filled with new dangers: Raiders, religious zealots and lots and lots of zombies.

Journal of a South African Zombie Apocalypse is a coming of age story in a very different kind of South Africa, and chronicles one family's fight for survival against the walking dead. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tall Tales Publishing
• Release date: Jul 11, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393521204

Lee Herrmann

Lee Herrmann was born and raised in South Africa. He has always had a fascination with zombies and has numerous contingency plans for the eventual apocalypse. Therefore, while he waited, it made sense to write a book about zombies in South Africa.  He has a great love of by comic books, movies, television and popular culture, and cites his zombie favourites as 28 Days Later, Dawn of the Dead and The Walking Dead. He currently works in a near-zombie environment as a Content Manager for a big corporate firm in Johannesburg and has had a varied writing background including copywriting, writing for web, radio and magazines. He is also the author of the mystery title, The Manservant Mysteries. Lee lives in Pretoria with his wife Dina, and two sons, Max and Nik. Every Saturday night he can be found going to the movies with his best friend Steve-Dave. 

Book preview

Journal of a South African Z

SOUTH AFRICAN ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE, Volume 1

Lee Herrmann

Published by Tall Tales Publishing, 2019.

This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

JOURNAL OF A SOUTH AFRICAN Z

First edition. July 11, 2019.

Copyright © 2019 Lee Herrmann.

ISBN: 978-1393521204

Written by Lee Herrmann.

Josaza cover front.jpg

JOURNAL OF A

SOUTH AFRICAN

ZOMBIE

APOCALYPSE

BY LEE HERRMANN

TallTales_Logo-B&W.png

Journal of a South African Zombie Apocalypse

©2014 Tall Tales

Cover design by Gabriella Botha

Edited by Emilia Klimova

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, locations and incidents are

products of the authors imagination. Any resemblance to actual

events, places or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

ISBN: 978-0-620-61592-1

eISBN: 978-0-620-61677-5

Layout by Boutique Books

www.saza.co.za

[e-mail]

For Dina, Max and Nik.

For letting my imagination get the better of me.

For Steve-Dave.

‘Take that, Washington! Eat lead, Einstein! Show's over, Shakespeare!’

Day 1

I’m not sure if anyone will ever read this, but zombies are real. The undead now walk the streets. They’ve taken over my neighbourhood, and quite possibly the whole of South Africa.

Things don’t look good.

My name is Konrad Olivier, but my family calls me Kon. I am fifteen years old. No, wait—I must be sixteen by now. I’ve seen the Jacarandas bloom twice since the outbreak, so I must have had a birthday somewhere in between. The outbreak… I say it as casually as if this were some sort of TV show. The truth is, it’s been hell.

Up until today we were hiding out in our house in Brooklyn, Pretoria. When I say ‘we’ I mean myself, my Pa, and my younger brother, Rik. Mom… Mom is dead—it’s just the three of us now. When everything went to hell, Pa felt it was best to stay at the house and hide. We had food, fruit trees in the back garden and a borehole, so it made the most sense to stay put and not venture out into the madness. We managed to fortify the place. We kept the lights off at night, so no one knew we were there. We saw it on the TV: dead people walking and everyone panicking—it didn’t seem real.

Then the electricity stopped, and finally our candles ran out. After a while, Raiders showed up and came through the house looking for food and fuel, but we had everything we valued stored up in the attic and they never found it, or us. Other than that, we’ve been surviving okay. Well, except for the zombies.

How did the outbreak start? I’m not sure. Pa says it was some experiment in the townships that went wrong. It all happened so fast. The reality is that the dead are now walking the streets. You can hear the moans more clearly at night, and every so often we hear scratching against the front gate as one of them walks up onto the pavement.

Pa always says that they don’t know we’re here, so there’s no need to worry. Eventually, the stray zombie moves on. I haven’t seen one up close, only from between the curtains of the upstairs guest room. They look just like in the movies: slowly walking or limping along, the flesh decaying and peeling from their bodies. Their eyes are red and almost all of them have a crusty whiteness caked around their mouths that makes them look like they’ve vomited.

Pa has been out a few times to find extra food and supplies in some of the nearby houses. He says they may seem slow, but they’re faster than they look and, if you’re not careful, you could end up surrounded before you know it.

Pa says they hunger for flesh.

He saw two zombies rip apart a stray dog that didn’t know better and, based on that, Pa is sure that if they get hold of you, they will eat you! He has lately been lecturing Rik and me a lot about how to deal with zombies, testing us and creating scenarios that we have to provide solutions for. I’ve only now figured out why: we’re leaving the house.

When Rik and I woke up this morning, Pa was sitting in the kitchen as always. He usually sits with a mug of water—habit from drinking coffee in the mornings before the outbreak happened. But this morning, the mug was empty. We sat in silence for a while as Pa stared at the mug.

‘Ons water is klaar.’

Pa always speaks Afrikaans when he is serious. Mom was English, and because of her we grew up speaking English at home and went to an English-speaking school. But when Pa speaks Afrikaans, you know you have to listen.

He went on to explain that he had been rationing our water for many days, hoping the intermittent stream was just air pockets in the borehole. But the fact was that it had dried up, and without water we would die of thirst. Pa had been thinking for days about what we should do. Because of our limited food and supplies, he’d decided it was best that we leave our house. The house I grew up in. The only home I’ve ever known. The house that has protected us from the zombies: until now.

Pa told us that we’d be leaving the next morning, just before the sun came up. We had the whole day to pack what we needed—just the basics. Rik is five years younger than me and I could tell he couldn’t properly grasp what had happened—the outbreak and the dead rising was difficult for him to process. I helped him decide what clothes to pack: cargo pants, hiking shoes, socks, a warm jacket, a hat, and two pairs of underpants. It’s summer, but we packed for every scenario. We didn’t know what was out there but, from the way Pa spoke, we both knew that we wouldn’t be coming back here.

‘Do you want to take anything personal along?’ I asked Rik.

He shook his head. Rik hasn’t talked much after Mom died—if he does, it’s to me more than Pa.

I decided to take a photo of Mom—the one hanging in the frame in the passage outside our room. I took it out of the frame and put it in the notebook I planned on using to document our trip of survival. I also took my copy of Gulliver’s Travels. It seemed appropriate, and Mom would always read it to us when we were small.

Downstairs, Pa was gathering up what little food we had left. He had rationed some of the water and was pouring it into an old army canteen and some Virgin Active gym squeeze bottles that never got used.

His bag was on the kitchen counter and, from what I could see, he’d just packed some old t-shirts and a jersey. He’d also put together some medical supplies, and some sunscreen.

Then I saw it.

On the table next to him was his gun, a .38 special: shiny black metal and a wooden handle. I’d only seen it a few times. Pa used to keep it in the safe at the bottom of his cupboard, behind his shoes. We were told as kids never to touch it, and that it was there to guard us from intruders.

Mom once told me that Pa had only fired it twice in his life.

Since the outbreak, Pa kept it on him, but always concealed, like he was embarrassed to let us see it. I figured it was his way of trying to shield us from violence.

He caught me looking at the gun.

‘You boys are going to have to learn how to shoot.’

For some reason it excited me to learn how to shoot a gun.

‘When?’ I asked, hoping it would be right then.

‘Soon,’ was his response. ‘But first we need to make some other weapons.’

Up until now, Pa had never talked about weapons or fighting. While the world was going to hell outside, he’d tried to make our lives as normal and structured as he could. Every day was the same: we’d wake up and tidy our room. Then we’d go downstairs and do an hour of exercise—a series of routines to build strength and improve fitness. These consisted of pushups, sit-ups, squats, star jumps and even riding on the old exercise bike in the garage. Then it would be breakfast, which usually consisted of fruit from the trees in the garden. Then, it was chores.

Pa was adamant we keep the place secure and in good running order, despite having no electricity. So Rik and I would go around making sure the doors were locked, the perimeter was safe and the manual pump on the borehole was working. Everything had to be quiet, so we would even go around oiling doors and handles to make sure there were no squeaks or groans.

After lunch, we had to spend time reading or building puzzles—Pa said it was to stimulate our minds. There were plenty of books in the study and every day we had to pick a topic from one of the reference books and do an oral report.

Most times it would be from one of the encyclopaedias, and I often spoke about a country or an animal—usually reptiles like snakes or crocodiles. Rik mostly spoke about planets or machinery. It had seemed boring in the beginning, but we ended up learning a lot. Apart from the reference books, Pa insisted we finish a novel every five days—I even read a few Mills & Boon that Mom had liked to read. I can’t understand why people read romance novels. The characters are always miserable until they fall in love, and then everyone magically lives happily ever after. Even if there weren’t zombies roaming outside, I wouldn’t have the patience for girls—too much giggling and texting.

Getting back to the reading…it was quite a strict regimen, but I could understand why Pa made us do it.

Also, it helped pass the time.

Pa led us to the garage. He had laid out various garden implements on the oil-stained ground, where the cars used to stand. Raiders had come through, what must have been months ago, and stolen our VW and Renault. We’d hidden in the attic and watched them drive off.

Pa had said we were lucky they’d bothered to open the front gates, instead of just ramming them down, like with so many other houses in the area. I didn’t feel very lucky at the time, and still don’t—without a car, we were going to have to go on foot.

On the ground was a panga, hedge clippers, a hammer, some kitchen knives, a broom and the garden rake. Pa had cleverly hidden most of the useful tools from the Raiders—he always likes to think ahead.

‘We’re going to make weapons with these,’ began Pa. ‘It’s important you make your weapon yourself. It needs to be strong and easy to use, because if we run into trouble you need to be able to stake your life on it.’

‘What kind of trouble?’ I asked, naively.

‘Zombies mostly, but there could be Raiders out there who want what we have.’

‘But we don’t have anything.’

‘They might not take the time to find that out, Kon.’

Pa knelt down. Rik and I followed him.

‘Kon, you’re the oldest, so I want you to carry this.’ Pa handed me the panga. It was in a green canvass sheath. Its blade was sharp and still looked new.

‘I want you to carry it strapped to your back with a belt. That way, you can get it out easily and quickly in an emergency. You need to practise taking it out and putting it back in.’

‘Yes, Pa.’

Pa turned to Rik.

‘Rik, you get the hammer.’ Pa picked up the red claw hammer with a black rubber handle. ‘Keep it strapped to your belt, so you can grab it quickly. Don’t forget that you have two sides to use. The claw can sometimes do more damage than the head,’ said Pa striking the air so Rik could see what he meant.

Pa then handed us each a large kitchen knife. I remember Mom buying them from a German guy at one of those food expos. Despite his sales pitch and the lifetime guarantee, at the time Pa was not impressed with the price.

‘Keep these in your bags as back-up weapons. Again, keep them in a place where you can easily get to them.’ We both nodded, looking at the shiny knives that had once been used solely to slice vegetables.

‘Okay, so those weapons will help you in close combat. You’re also going to need something for long-range attacks.’

Pa picked up the hedge clippers and unscrewed the blades from each other. He handed each of us one blade and then picked up the rake and the broom. After ripping the heads off both, Rik and I were each handed a stick.

‘Do you see where I’m going with this?’

Again we both nodded.

The sight of our father preparing his sons to kill had left us with nothing to say. It actually scared me a bit.

‘You need to tie the blade to the stick. Use the rope and wire on the workbench. Make sure it’s tied tightly. You’ll use this as a bayonet to stab anyone before they get close to you.’

Pa stood and looked at us. He could see the uncertain looks in our eyes.

‘Once you’re done, come outside to the back garden and we’ll practise using them.’

‘What are you going to use, Pa?’ I asked as he headed towards the doorway.

‘I’ll show you outside,’ he replied without turning.

When we were finished, we found Pa waiting for us outside in the back garden. I had grown up playing here, but now it seemed strange… unrecognisable. The flowers were long dead and the grass had grown wild. The swimming pool was now empty and full of leaves—Pa had used the water to water the fruit trees that we had along the back wall. Plums, figs and lemons. They had served us well since the zombies arrived, especially since most of the shops and houses had been looted.

‘Let’s have a look.’ Pa walked forward and inspected how we had tied the blades to the wooden handles. He shook one, before stabbing it into the ground, flexing and twisting the blade.

‘Good,’ he said, nodding in approval. Then, he came closer to us and put a hand on each of our shoulders.

‘This is not the kind of thing I ever thought I would have to teach you, but you need to know how to kill.’

Rik’s eyes widened.

‘You need to not only know how to defend yourselves, but each other as well. You need to look out for each other, because we don’t know what’s out there. Verstaan?’

We both nodded again.

Pa then went on to show us how to use the weapons he had given us. The homemade bayonet was not to be thrown like a spear, but rather as a long-range stabbing weapon. On the living, we were to aim for areas that kill or incapacitate: the face, neck, chest, groin or Achilles heel were all areas that would put a man down quickly and allow us to get away. Zombies were a different matter. Pa was