Mr. Evin’s Zombies

Mr. Evins leaves the shopping mall with his doctor’s bag only 25 minutes before the first outbreak. He walks to his car, enters it, starts the engine, and pulls forward out of the space he had backed into only 1440 seconds before the first infected leaps for the place his bumper was, missing it by a foot. He begins playing a Mozart CD 2 minutes later or, 22 minutes before the zombie, standing by the stop sign at the parking lot exit, lets out a tuba like moan. He turns left onto Benison Avenue only 21 minutes worth of moments before the zombie child reaches for the handle of his car door, which was no longer there.

Mr. Evins drives down Benison at a lazy pace, averaging 15 minutes ahead of the chaos of the zombie all-u-can-eat apocalypse buffet. He makes a quick left onto Amrack Boulevard 19 minutes before a split second of time when a 1977 Lincoln Continental whisks by, behind where he was, hitting the curb rising into the air and somersaulting into the plate-glass windows of a Whataburger. Mr. Evins turns right onto Peligrina 18 minutes and 59 seconds before the acrobatic car bursts into flame.

He crosses Cleveland 15 minutes and 23 seconds before a pickup truck covered in gore and full of armed teenagers goes racing north past the intersection of Peligrina and Cleveland. He proceeds half a block further along Peligrina and pulls into his driveway 13 minutes and 3 seconds before his neighbor Mr. Jernett, bolting out of the Jernett residence with blood gushing from his neck, falls behind the hedge separating their properties.

Mr. Evins picks up his bag from passenger seat and exits his car. He walks to his front door along a pink gravel path and up three cement steps. He unlocks his door 10 minutes and 10 seconds before the police helicopter, flying low over the rooftops, collides with the two-story house three lots away. Mr. Evins enters the front hall and closes the three windowed Craftsman style door. He enters his kitchen and dumps the contents of his bag on the oak breakfast table, carefully counting out the 7 empty syringes 8 minutes and 16 seconds before the sonic shockwave of gas tanks exploding rattles the frame of his wooden house.

Mr. Evins takes a glass from the white tiled kitchen counter, opens the refrigerator and takes out a pitcher of lemonade and pours himself a glass 6 minutes before Mrs. Evins locks herself into the handicapped restroom at the shopping mall while all around people go mad.

He takes the glass of lemonade and walks back out the front door and stands on the porch sipping the lemonade for 5 minutes and 30 seconds. He takes a deep breath and sits down on the swing adorning his front porch 1 second before the world ends.

Story notes:

This is hopefully the first of many micro-fiction/character sketches that I want to create and part of my long ago promised story a day idea. Turns out that wasn’t really feasible but I think I can probably get 2-3 out a week if I write while riding the bus. The idea is this: it is something I can do while riding the bus using my phone or a small notebook. These stories will be rough cut from the fiber of the mind without a lot of post editing. Some of them may be related but most will be only connected in the most tangential way. Comments are welcome.