My Last Testament Read online

  My Last Testament

  By

  George Milonas

  To my wife Jennifer

  Special thanks to Tony May, editor and keyboard player extraordinaire. Apple pie shots all around. Here’s hoping you finally find your taco.

  Special thanks to Ed Dechant for the world’s greatest book cover.

  Special thanks to Michelle Hemzacek for the back cover art. You’re the best Zombie ever!

  My Last Testament

  As I swung the Indian War Club towards the skull of the Zombie racing towards me arms splayed, I screamed out ‘Shit!’ at the top of my lungs. I just couldn’t believe that the worst case scenario I planned for had actually come true. I was actually ecstatic at the thought of being right. Never mind the fact that I was under attack. I was right!

  Unfortunately, my swearing and my newfound confidence affected my swing. The club caught my former mailman in the teeth and not the forehead as I planned. The new Zed as I called them, didn’t make a sound as he fell backward onto the concrete drive. His arm broke under his weight, and the bone shattered on the way out of its wrist. I thought immediately, ‘that’s going to need to be operated on’ before I remembered that the former ‘He’ before me was now just an ‘It’.

  The mailman felt no pain, no mercy, and no empathy. All of its humanity had been drained from his Central Nervous System by the almost lethal fungus and prions that ravished its body. All it was now was a relentless eating machine looking for its next meal, and I was sorry to say that I seemed to be its next target. I would soon fix that.

  My war club was readied for its backswing. I swung in a wide arc over its broken arm that was spraying blood towards my work boots and connected under its jaw. The head popped back, and I felt the Zed’s head snap at the neck. Without a viable spinal cord, the thing collapsed downward immediately in a heap. Amazingly, I still saw the mouth snapping its now crushed teeth toward me looking for a tasty bite. I had obviously left the brain intact, and the Zed was still partially viable in its new incarnation. It would have to wait for its final blow as three of its friends were moaning toward me.

  I didn’t have time to waste. I laid the club down on the hood of my SUV and pulled out my 9mm pistol that was holstered at my side. The gun caught momentarily on its way out before I could pull it free. I needed to slow down. The adrenaline pumping through my system was making me sloppy, and it definitely wasn’t the right time for that.

  I heard a high pitched scream in the car. My wife was shrieking at the top of her lungs in absolute terror. I almost reflexively went to her to comfort her. I ignored her instead. It was her fault that we were in this mess. She had insisted that I was just being paranoid about these nonexistent Zombies. She had laughed contemptuously at my stupidity, and for a second, I had hoped she was right. She said she was going for Starbucks and headed toward our car when I intercepted her and grabbed her keys. I knew it would do no good to try and physically stop her so I got in and drove. She was really annoyed by that, but she just laughed again at my scared demeanor. And here we were.

  As she screamed, I realized that I couldn’t actually stay mad at her right now. How was she supposed to know that I was right? Everything she had ever learned and knew in her mind and her heart told her that I was wrong. There were no Zombies. I was clinically insane. I was delusional. In this instance, she was slapped in the face with the fact that I was right and that the World was wrong. Everyone had been against me. Now they knew the truth! In my happiness at that thought, I instantly forgave her. Then I realized that I loved her and needed to protect her. After all she was the mother of my four children. Unfortunately, her screams were driving me nuts. It was hard enough shooting anybody in the head let alone doing it with a Horror movie soundtrack in the back of my head. I blocked the sound out rather than scream at her to ‘shut the fuck up!’ Coward that I was, I still liked sex with her too much. I ignored the sounds instead, and I front sighted the Zed coming at me from the front. His forward momentum abruptly stopped as the bullet entered him mid face and exited his occipital lobe. I quickly shifted to the others and put them out of their miseries.

  After the gunshots, I heard nothing but my wife’s screams. Despite the further lack of any threats, she continued to yell. I was spent for the moment and didn’t have the heart to comfort her. I got into the car and was about to drive off when I remembered my war club on the hood. I carefully looked out of the vehicle before I got out. I grabbed the weapon and then remembered the Zed at my feet. Its jaw was still flapping at me. I swung the club like a sand wedge and took out its temple. All its motion and sound stopped.

  My wife had her head in her hands and was now sobbing without making a peep. Her reality which had been present for all her thirty-nine years had just immediately stopped and was replaced by a new vision straight out of Hell. I felt sorry for her and everybody else in the World. I wanted Humanity’s innocence back. Unfortunately, it was gone permanently.

  It was time to go home. I had a family to protect. I had spent a month planning and preparing for this. I hoped I was ready. I drove quickly toward the home I had turned into a fortress and hoped it would not be the last resting place for my family.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Epilogue

  Chapter 1

  "Please allow me to introduce myself, I'm a man of wealth and taste." Not really, although I wished this little bit from my favorite song was really true. My name is John Miller. I was born and raised on the south side of Chicago, and I still have the chip on my shoulder to prove it. I work hard. I am successful. I love my family, and I have a real bad attitude when somebody fucks with me or the people I care about. And right now I have a legion of undead Zeds attempting to fuck with everything I love. I'm sure every person still alive was feeling the same way.

  I've decided to dictate this last testament so that what I'm trying to accomplish outlives me. I have no doubt that I’m going to end up either dead or one of them. At this point in the World, it is the natural order of things. Statistically, I have no chance in Hell. But, I’ve always hated stats. It’s all could’ves and should’ves, but what I’ve found is that there are always exceptions to the rules. Always. I’ve seen far too many people live that shouldn’t have, and far too many people die that should have been alive. I’ve no doubt that I’m going to die, but here I was doing my damndest to prove the stats wrong. That is the essence of my personality. When someone tells me that I’m wrong or that I can’t do something, I go way out of my way to prove them wrong. It’s a way of thinking that has gotten me into trouble from the day I was born. I make no apologies for it though. What it really comes down to is the fact that I really don’t give a shit about anything but my own free will. And I will to live.

  I'm speaking into a Dictaphone because I simply don't have time to sit down and write about all the events that have overcome me. I hope you don't mind that this text is not too polished. If so, too fucking bad. I'm really busy right now.

  I'm a Doctor, a Cardiothoracic Surgeon specifically. I spent my entire youth studying when I had the chance. After getting beat up repeatedly as a kid, I found it easier to sit and read and learn than to try and explain all the bruises to my parents. That's not to say I didn't give back more than I got. I spent a decade fighting in the martial arts and taking boxing lessons. The problem was that most of the time, I didn't have just one opponent. When bullies and shitheads wanted to attack and steal from you, they typically came at you as a group. And I have t
o admit, they got their licks in the first couple of years. That is, until I decided I would find out who they were and attack them when they were unprepared- namely when they were alone and vulnerable. I preferred stick weapons, and I preferred to leave as many marks as possible. After a while, people figured this out and left me alone which was perfectly all right with me.

  Meanwhile, my love of learning continued. I got straight A's. Coupled with a huge love of running and weight lifting, chicks dug me. I was extremely cocky which they also liked. I still am, and they still do. God, I’m such a prick. But hey, that’s who I am.

  This bad attitude continued until I was almost killed my junior year of high school. During the summer, I was running in the park when the older brothers of a girl I had sex with and dumped caught me and almost beat my brains in. Twenty-five years later I still bear the marks on my head along with a curved nose from the beating.

  While in the hospital, I got my ass reamed from a trauma surgeon. He screamed at me for being a dumbass for a half an hour. I actually agreed with every one of his points, and for once I listened. I stopped screwing around and got to work. I also stopped messing around with women and alcohol. It changed my life. I also decided I wanted to become a Surgeon. I never knew that I could yell at people for their idiocy. I actually liked that.

  I went premed, and then I went to med school. The only medical rotation I loved was surgery. To me everything else sucked or was boring. I had the attitude that only a surgeon could heal and treat. I still do even though I’ve been proven wrong on this many times. After 5 years of a Surgery Residency and one failed marriage, I finished a Cardiothoracic Subspecialty. I moved to the middle of Wisconsin and began a hugely busy practice where I made a ton of money. I married again, and I now have four beautiful children. They are the reason I'm living in the middle of nowhere. I prefer they have good educations without the physical abuse of where I grew up.

  Anyway about a month ago, my good friend Alex, an Infectious Disease specialist with USAMRIID called me and asked how I was. That was the weirdest part of it. We communicated through email exclusively a couple of times a day for years. Something was up obviously. I confronted her immediately. She denied it at first. That lasted all of thirty seconds. Then she almost broke down. The strain in her voice was more than I'd ever heard, and I had gone through med school and residency with her.

  Alex was being sent to Mongolia for a new outbreak of something really bad. They had reports of Zombies in the area. I burst out laughing. I heard silence from the other end. She wasn't kidding. I made fun of her. I went on and on about how stupid this was for a few minutes unabated. She said nothing. I gulped in fear and shut my mouth.

  Finally after thirty seconds, she started from the beginning. Apparently the Russians genetically modified the CJD Prion. This was a protein that caused brain damage and a rapid deterioration in mental function. It was spread through bodily fluids and resulted in blurred vision, abnormal gait, dementia, nervous jerks, extreme confusion and speech impairment. I realized that this could definitely look like Zombie-ism. Unfortunately, the Russians had modified it to become extremely contagious and fast acting. There was no known cure and it acted on its human host in a couple of hours. The Russians wanted a weapon that would control its enemies rather than kill them. They tested this on some unsuspecting Afghanis in the 1980s and continued to modify it until they sold it to the Chinese a few years ago. Now it was loose and control of these Zombies was nonexistent. Apparently the Mongolians had thousands of the undead wandering and eating every animal in their path. The Mongols were screaming for help. She was heading overseas with the 82nd Airborne the next morning. I was about to question the wisdom of an overseas military invasion when I realized they were on a mission of annihilation and not a medical mission. She was going in just as a technical advisor. My heart sank. She knew she was going to die, and she was trying to warn me. She was probably violating every oath of secrecy she had sworn. She could be locked up for the rest of her life. Holy crap!

  I told her I loved her which silenced her immediately. I’ve never said it to her before. She knew I meant it. She might have just saved my life. Instead, she said goodbye and hung up. I stood there with the phone in my hand like an idiot. I was truly at a loss. A couple of minutes passed with me wondering what to do. For once in my life, I was dumbstruck.

  I panicked. Luckily my family was away. I didn't want them to see me going nuts. I almost called for them to come home. I stayed my hand and put the phone down. I realized I had months to prepare. I hoped.

  Immediately I hit the Internet, and I was shocked by what I found. Either millions of people were already prepared for this eventuality, or people just wanted to go through a sort of mental exercise to prepare for any end of the world scenario. I thought maybe, although I hoped the latter.

  Then all I had to type in was Zombie apocalypse, and millions of hits came up on my search engine. It had all the information I needed!

  Basically, I needed food and water, shelter (an impenetrable fortress), energy, and lots of weapons and ammo. I also needed ways to communicate with the outside world and a means of escape if necessary.

  I could do this. I got a list of food and water supplies just by downloading it. I went on Amazon and Wal-Mart and ordered enough food to last our family and forty other people for the next three years. I would have the stuff delivered directly to my home. I would also over the next three weeks go out and purchase everything that would last an eternity and drive it home. I needed to rent a huge pickup for the next month. Why waste my money buying? If the Apocalypse did occur, I wouldn't bother returning it. Who was going to come and get it?

  I lived on five acres, and I already had a thick hedge around the house which was impenetrable- or so I thought. It had thick thorns in the branches and hurt anybody that came into contact with it. I thought about it for a second and realized that wasn't good enough. Zombies either couldn't feel pain or didn't care. I was going to put up a huge security fence. It had to look good and not attract too much attention. I chose a wrought iron ten-foot fence with spikes on top that was cemented into the ground all the way around the property. It would be costly but worth it. Everything would be going on credit cards so I hoped the Apocalypse started before the payments came due. I also chose a huge thick heavy rolling gate that I could lock with multiple large padlocks. I also would put in a rear gate for a quick exit that would be hidden. I liked that.

  I had a well onsite, but I would need a generator to keep it running. It also needed an easy to use hand-cranked backup in case I ran out of all power. I had to assume all energy would run out. I decided on solar and propane. I would buy enough propane to last me for five years. They sold the tanks right in the county and buried them for you for a nominal fee. The solar would be harder. Almost nobody in Wisconsin used solar because of the limited sunlight we received. It just wasn't worth the price. Today it was. I ordered roof panels to cover every square inch of my roof and garages. At least I would have light in my house. I then ordered generators that ran on propane for heat and my refrigeration units. Frozen meat would be nice. I also ordered a shit load of that.

  Next, I bought thousands of batteries of all sizes and didn't forget car batteries. I may need those most of all. I also bought rechargeables by the truck load. It couldn't hurt.

  I ordered cold weather clothing for the family in all sizes. My kids were still growing, and I couldn't assume they'd fit into stuff even a few months later. I ordered cold weather gear that ranged from 32 degrees to minus 20 degrees in all sizes.

  Next I turned to weapons. Unfortunately, I couldn't buy any guns on the internet. But I did buy .22 caliber air guns with hollow point ammo. I bought over a 100,000 rounds, and it only cost me $2500. I couldn't believe the price. The guns were relatively cheap and were effective out to 50 meters with a good scope which I included. I bought one hundred of them. I also went on Amazon and bought hand-to-hand weapons from Cold Steel. I bought swords, clubs, bludgeo
ns, tomahawks, shovels, aluminum baseball bats and anything else I could get my hands on to crack skulls. I would hit gun stores in the morning. Ammunition I ordered today. I concentrated on the most common: in rifle, .223, 5.56, 7.62/.308, and in pistol .45, 9mm, and .40. I also bought thousands of 12 gauge double ought buck.

  I looked at the clock, and it said 4:30 am. Wow. I had been at this for over 12 hours. I was literally exhausted. I took a shower and went to work to make rounds instead of going to sleep. Luckily I only had two post-op patients to see as this was Saturday. I took care of them and went to Home Depot and Menards. I filled up my car. I went to the gun store and bought two Benelli shotguns and two pistols. It was all that I was allowed at one time for some reason. I bought thousands of rounds of ammo. Apparently that was okay. I would need to hit a gun show. There, it wouldn't matter. I'd have to find out more about those as I had never been to one. It was ridiculous that I would have to wait. Fortunately I already owned a 5.56 M4 and two pistols. So I felt relatively safe for the moment. I was a great shot because I practiced all the time. But I was seriously pissed. I needed an arsenal! After that I went and rented a Ford F-450 Super Duty King Ranch. Hey, why not? I would have to go rent another one soon as a backup. I drove it off the lot and went right to Sam's Club. Thousands of dollars and three trips later, I finally laid down to go to sleep at midnight. I needed the rest desperately.

  Unfortunately, I woke up four hours later angry and depressed at what was to come. I got back on the Internet and began to order everything I could related to camping. I figured it couldn't hurt.