Survival In The Zombie Outbreak

The station’s red vacancy sign blinked through the rainless dark, missing every third letter so it read VAC NCY.

Mara Kincaid crouched beneath it with one hand on her knife and the other wrapped around the strap of her pack. Beyond the cracked windows, the roadside station sagged into the weeds, its roof folded over the broadcasting room like a crushed tin lid. A faded sign still promised WEATHER, NEWS, AND MUSIC, though someone had painted a black X across the word NEWS.

Her radio whispered against her hip.

Static. Then three clipped tones.

Mara glanced toward the empty road. Nothing moved between the abandoned gas pumps and the overturned buses rusting beyond them. The town limits sign leaned at an angle in the ditch, its painted population number scraped away.

She touched the radio through her jacket.

“Again,” she murmured.

The three tones came back.

Not a voice. Not yet.

She needed power. Enough to wake the station’s transmitter and hear where the repeating signal originated. For two days, the same pattern had followed her across dead streets and empty farm roads: three tones, a burst of static, and a woman’s voice cut off before the words could form.

If it was a trap, she needed to know. If it was real, it might be the first lead she’d found since Liora disappeared from the evacuation line.

Mara pushed through the station’s side door.

The hinges gave with a wet groan. Inside, rainwater stains crawled down the walls, though the ceiling above had been dry for months. The lobby smelled of mold, old wiring, and the sharp animal stink of something nesting behind the counter. She raised her flashlight and swept the beam over overturned chairs, a collapsed rack of brochures, and a child’s red boot lying alone beneath the ticket window.

Her boots crunched over glass.

“Power room,” she whispered.

The flashlight beam caught a hallway leading toward the rear. At its end, a metal door bore a faded lightning-bolt symbol. Mara crossed the lobby slowly, pausing whenever the building creaked. The radio at her hip remained silent.

That was worse than the static.

She tried the power-room handle. Locked.

Mara drew the knife and slid its point into the gap beside the latch. A twist, a hard shove, and the lock snapped. The door swung inward.

The generator sat beneath a tarp, its casing filmed with gray dust. A line of fuel cans stood against the wall. Mara counted them with her light.

Three.

She opened the first. Empty. The second held a finger’s depth of cloudy fuel. The third sloshed when she lifted it.

“Please,” she said, though there was no one to hear.

The generator coughed when she poured the fuel in. It coughed again, spat a dark puff through the exhaust, and died.

Mara closed her eyes.

From somewhere in the station came a soft scrape.

She turned off the flashlight.

The darkness pressed close. Her fingers tightened around the knife. Another scrape followed, then a dull knock against the lobby glass.

Not wind.

Mara moved to the power-room doorway and looked out. A pale face drifted past the broken window. Its mouth opened and closed against the glass, teeth tapping softly.

A second figure stumbled into view.

Then a third.

The station’s front doors shuddered.

Mara backed toward the generator. Walkers had been drawn by the sound. Maybe by her. Either way, the lobby would not hold them for long.

She struck a match and leaned close to the engine. The fuel line had split near the intake, the rubber cracked into a dozen tiny mouths. She tore a strip from the hem of her shirt and wrapped it tight, then braced the line with the metal clip from her flashlight.

The front doors boomed.

Mara pulled the starter cord.

The engine roared awake.

Light flashed through the station. Dead bulbs flickered overhead, throwing the lobby into a stuttering rhythm of white and black. The walkers slammed against the glass. One pane burst inward, scattering shards across the floor.

Mara ran.

The broadcasting room stood behind a second door at the end of the hall. She hit the handle, found it locked, and rammed her shoulder into it. Pain shot through the bruised muscles along her ribs, but the door opened.

Inside, consoles crowded the room beneath a layer of dust. A reel-to-reel machine sat beside a microphone, its reels still threaded. The station’s call letters had been painted across the wall in blue: K-R-N-8.

Mara dropped her pack and went straight for the transmitter.

The generator groaned outside.

“Stay on,” she told it.

She flipped switches. One panel sparked. Another lit green. The radio on her hip screamed with static.

Then the woman’s voice came through the room speakers.

“ - if you can hear this, do not approach the eastern - ”

The signal broke.

Mara leaned over the console. “Come on.”

The generator coughed.

Outside, the doors gave way.

Walkers poured into the lobby, their feet dragging through glass. Their moans rolled down the hallway, thick and rising....