Last Stand on Zombie Island by Christopher L. Eger Page A

everything she could think of to get her phone working again. She took the phone apart, reset the battery, turned the radio signal off and on, and dumped her cache. She just needed five minutes of good signal to get in contact with the police, or if nothing else, at least find out what was going on in the world outside of the tiny bank branch.
    She tried once more to make a call, only to receive a busy signal. In one last attempt to reach out, she opened the Facebook app on her phone and noticed that her inbox icon had mail for the first time all day. With her face red with excitement, and her eyes going slightly off focus from the adrenaline infusion, she clicked on the inbox.
    There were three messages. Two were random junk mail admin messages apologizing for obvious nationwide network and system outages. The third was from her mother in Texas.
    “I’ve tried reaching you all day but all the lines are busy. Phil and I were assaulted trying to get to the airport and are at the hospital now. He is sick and they think he may have been infected. They say it is something called Disease-K. One of them bit me but I think I am ok. So far, all I have is a terrible migraine and body aches. I hope things are better in Alabama than they are here.
    “Dallas has been without power all morning and there are people in the streets. The National Guard is here now so maybe things will get better before tonight.”
    Mackenzie put her phone down on the counter and willed herself to stop playing with it.
     
    — | — | —
     

    ChapteR 15
     
     
Community Center, Gulf Shores.
     
    “Guess you are a good guy to have around in a tight spot, but we gotta stop meeting like this,” Stone said to Billy while the two stood at the reopened Community Center door with Sergeant Durham.
    “I agree a hundred percent,” Billy said.
    The three men looked out across the town green at the surreal sight they encountered. Nearly fifty bodies were scattered akimbo around them.
    The bodies of the infected were easy to tell apart from those who were not. Most of the infected had been shot in the open as they ran towards possible victims. Their poor victims were, almost without exception, against the walls of the surrounding buildings where they were trapped. The victims were horribly kicked, torn, strangled, and ripped to death by the bare hands of their attackers. Billy saw random people stop and take a picture of the unreal diorama with their phones, as if to make sure that it was real and not a dream.
    “It looks like it started in the jail with a couple of infected inmates. The poor bastards locked up with them didn’t stand a chance,” Stone explained.
    “We lost half of what’s left of the department in there. There are many more infected bodies in there than there are out here,” Durham said.
    “Do I need to make a statement about this?” Billy asked Durham, motioning to the body of the inmate he had shot in the face, as it was drug from the Community Center by a pair of MPs.
    “I’m sure someone will talk to you about that but I wouldn’t imagine, under the circumstances, anything will come of it,” Durham said.
    “There really wasn’t any other choice. I told him to stop but he just wouldn’t,” Billy said.
    Stone nodded, “Did you have that .38 on you the whole time we were at the school this morning?”
    “Yeah, it’s been a hell of a day,” Billy confirmed.
    “Well, from the sound of the situation, it’s a good deal you had it with you. If those zombies had gotten inside that Center we might not have been able to contain the outbreak,” Stone said.
    “Zombies, huh?” Billy asked.
    “That’s what all the troops are calling them. It seems somewhat appropriate. We’ve already noticed that it takes headshots to drop them. They’ll keep coming at you all day until you give them a little love to the dome,” Stone said.
    The infected seemed to be the ultimate catalyst for change.
    From what Billy had seen, they were