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In a backpack you have:
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With your vehicle you have
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Of course you have know way of knowing that several total strangers have packed this exact same list of supplies, though some have added to it to take best use of their skill set.
Several days into the illness the deaths begin. The second night after the deaths start you give up sleeping and decide to leave your home and get out of town to someplace less populated… (or to be around more people if you are our farmboy) you’re not even sure which direction you should head you simply grab your gear and take to the road.
As you drive though the pre-dawn mist you feel you need to pull over not for fuel or rest but for other less tangible reasons… something’s giving you the willies. There is a cold empty feeling in the pit of your stomach and you feel sort of exposed. You’re about 2-3 miles away from the SD HWY 46 exit on US Interstate 29. You’ve been here before and know there is a truck stop/café and a cup of coffee sounds really good… maybe even steak and eggs and a slice of pie for breakfast. That will get you feeling right. First you stop and top off your gas tank and then empty your bladder. Next door is the diner.
Once you enter the diner you sit along the counter at the far end where it wraps back around by the kitchen door subconsciously seeking the warmth, against not only the chill of the early morning, but also the chill in your soul. The cook comes out though the double hinged doors and Says “I’ll be with you in a moment I’m the only one here holding down the fort because both my counter girl and waitress are both out sick… or worse.”
“Or worse” You think to yourself, yeah that pretty much sums it up.
As the cook walks back to the kitchen he reaches up and turns on a TV, that you all pretty much have your back to, and walks back thought the swinging doors.
Small talk is made amongst you. most notably about you all ordering steak and eggs, food is served and conversation continues but is slowed.
About half way through your plate of food (which was twice as much as you could have eaten in the first place) there is a silence in the conversation and a loud scream from the TV (that everyone has been ignoring purposefully) and everyone turns on their stool to look.
It’s a shot of an attractive female news station field reporter being torn apart by what appears to be a shambling mob. The image shakes wildly as the camera man runs for the news van. Suddenly the image jolts, blacks out, and then returns. The camera must be on the ground on its side, you can see a man that falls/rolls/skids onto screen from bottom to top. Just as he tries to regain his feet another person knocks him down with a brutal kick to the chest. All the while there is a moaning and a screeching coming from the speaker as well as the chants of “No no no no no” from the camera man.
Suddenly two more people grab the camera man and one of them viciously bites open his throat and cuts off his scream of “ZOMBIsssss…”
Just when the camera man goes still the moaning quits and the screen fills with shambling legs, some of which jostle and move the camera. Zombies shamble top to bottom.
The image cuts to a male anchor at a news desk that has the most wide-eyed look of shock and fear that any human could display. He is literally speechless with horror for about 7 seconds and then starts “This can’t be real, it can’t be, there is no way this is happening, It can’t happen, no way, no F***ing way!” He launches himself back from the desk and the in-studio camera man has trouble following his pell-mell escape as he streaks for the edge of the stage.
The screen goes black and the “emergency alert system” tones blare while the screen start to show a banner while the electronic voice that announces storm alerts starts explaining that “those that were thought to have died of the Wave are now arising as murderous psychopaths” and advises all citizens “to stay in their homes, not open the door to anybody and to avoid using the phone to keep circuits open for emergency calls.”
You notice that the sun has just risen and is casting a strong reddish light into the diner, in the pause before the EAS tones erupt from the speakers you think you hear moaning...
