What seemed like it was just going to be another boring day at work turned into anything but: Bret’s bad neighbors, previously only annoying but harmless, turned into some sort of purple-faced zombies. His first mission: get out of the neighborhood. Along the way he runs into several people who have avoided the zombie plague, including the beautiful Andi, insane mad scientist Doctor Gurklovich, and a pair of government men in matching black suits. But just as he gets the hang of the zombies…
… Aliens show up.
Chapter 1 — Bad Neighbors
From the moment my eyes opened that morning I could tell it would be one of those days. The evidence was pretty clear: the sun wasn’t up, the alarm on my phone hadn’t gone off, and yet I was awake because of Mister Truck. That’s my neighbor, across the street, and I hate him almost as much as I hate anyone else in my life. Mister Truck has a weird habit of getting up a solid hour before the sun and turning on his loud, obnoxious truck. He lets it sit for a half hour before he goes anywhere. Mister Truck doesn’t sit in his truck, he’s not defrosting it or warming it up. This happens year round, six days a week.
I haven’t bothered learning his name because his name doesn’t matter. I wouldn’t like knowing him.
With a resolved sigh I climbed out of bed and made my way toward my ever-present addiction: the coffee maker. With all this time I could make some spectacular coffee, catch up on some news on my phone, maybe even play a game before heading into work. Sure, the option of going in early and getting in a good day’s work existed but corporate policy taught me long ago that such efforts are worth about as much as the discarded pubic hair that seems to grow from urinals.
When my phone gave me no love I assumed the Wi-fi was down and it was too stupid to connect to the cellular network, so I manually switched that off and… no cellular network. Well, local news on the few stations I get with my antenna, then. But that was down, too. And it wasn’t even a Monday. By the time I fiddled with the router and the cable modem enough to make myself sure it was the company’s fault, the coffee machine was singing out to let me know the coffee was ready. It wasn’t a real song, just the steady beeps it let out, but it was prettier than anything from a songbird.
As I poured coffee into my spill-proof travel mug I stared into my backyard. My neighbor’s cat was leaving me a present to find with the lawnmower, silhouetted perfectly by the rising sun as her tail dipped and rose with every deposit. This neighbor wasn’t the same as Mister Truck, but I also didn’t know her name. Cat Lady or something like that. She had two annoying children of an unknowable age and a husband who seemed to like her less than I did.
I should get a big, nasty, cat-eating dog.
With no connectivity to the greater internet I decided sliding into work early would at least provide me a source of information. Maybe there was an actual outage I could read about and then refresh the article on repeatedly hoping for updates. I grabbed the backpack of necessities (such as co-worker canceling headphones), my coffee, and headed for the door. Before I got a step onto my own shabby porch a dog I didn’t recognize bolted past me, inches from my tattered welcome mat. One of the green ones with ugly grass-like carpet.
The dog ran like he was being chased.
I watched him go down the yards and realized that unlike my neighbors and the cat he was a creature of some grace. Part black lab and part greyhound, with some other stuff mixed in, he ran like it was his profession. Ducking under, jumping over, and drifting around the various flowered obstacles in people’s yards, I was almost jealous of his ability to see and react.
Then the thing chasing him lumbered past my open door. It was Mister Truck, swinging a big bit of lumber — a two-by-four of about five feet, broken off at the end and not sawed, with a pair of nails on the end he wasn’t holding — and I wondered if maybe the dog had somehow repaired his muffler for him to show such aggression.
Sadly, I wasn’t wondering long. He spotted me as he lumbered after the much faster animal, and I earned his ire for… standing in my own door. The man swung at me, missing by several feet because he spent a life time convinced lengths of five are actually lengths of eight (if you know what I mean), and I stepped back behind the protective frame of the door.
“What the fuck, man,” I said.
His answer was about as graceful as I expected: “Raaaaaurgh!”
And then he swung again, but this time a little closer. It was clear to me that his morning started somehow worse than mine. Under normal circumstances I would chalk it up to crazy, barricade the door, and call the cops. But I knew the phones weren’t working and worried that if he was left free to his own devices the dickhead might catch that random dog and hurt it. Fueled by my own irritations and the surety that I could take this fat-ass down, I stepped out and wrapped my free arm around the wooden club as he raised it, preventing him from gaining the leverage to swing again. That put me less than two feet from his ugly mug.
Which I bashed with my own beautiful mug: the stainless steel coffee kind. I figured a good bop in the nose would bring him to his senses. It’s the sort of jarring impact that anyone who isn’t a professional fighter takes personal. The last time I put myself in a situation that resulted in a punch to the nose I was pretty pissed, but it convinced me to discontinue annoying the boy who punched me. As an adult reflecting on it, that day I was being a dick and had it coming. Maybe Mister Truck would have that same realization if he ever grew up.
His nose immediately began to bleed, which often prompts people to clutch their hands to their nose. But Mister Truck let go of his club and began clawing at me with both hands, repeating his earlier taunt of “Raaaaaurgh!” It was then that I noticed his skin taking on an almost glowing, bright purple tint. As though a smooth layer of lights were embedded underneath it.
I didn’t care for that one bit, so I let him have it again. No matter how hard I hit the bastard he didn’t seem to care, and it didn’t take long to make his face resemble a trampled lasagna.
Around that time I noticed my other neighbor, Cat Lady, heading toward us. She was a little under-dressed, wearing only a partially open robe over her juice-box figure, and a single sock. I assumed she rushed out because of the commotion, unaware that everyone could see just what sort of Cat Lady she was.
“Hey help me with this guy,” I said. “He’s on PCP or something.” I’d heard that on the tee-vee, that PCP made people crazy. My experimentation with drugs started and stopped with caffeine and alcohol.
“Raaaaaurgh!” Cat Lady said.
“Oh now what the f-”
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