Zombie

A flash fiction challenge, based on the name of a cocktail.
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Sarah broke down her favorite rifle and began cleaning it.  It was a 5.45mm with a built-in suppressor. The bullets had steel penetrators inside.

She didn’t know what started the Zombie Apocalypse four months ago.  It didn’t matter.  What she did know was that the legends were right, the only way to stop those fuckers was to bust open the braincase.  The penetrators worked.  She also knew that the zombies came to the sound of guns.  If you didn’t want to fight a horde, you kept it quiet.  Zombies made a sound that was not a scream, not a moan, but if one made it, the others came.

At least they didn’t come fast.  They were slow, stupid and relentless.  There seemed to be a never-ending supply of them.

The rifle was her husband Marvin’s.  He was on a business trip when it began.  She had no contact with him since. It didn’t matter.  All that mattered was to avoid being zombie food.  Marvin had taught her to shoot.  She hadn’t been bad at it.  She was a lot better now.

There was another one. It was coming her way.  Sarah quickly reassembled the rifle, charged the chamber and put the dot of the three-power sight on its forehead.  She caressed the trigger, there was a loud pfft, like a large animal farting and the “ka-chunk” of the recoil spring.  The zombie went down.  It had once been Mr. Miller, who owned the Sonoco station in town.  Sarah had long ago adapted to the reality that zombies were something that wore the bodies of people, many that she had known.  She got over it when her son became one.

Sarah had been kind of chunky and a clothes horse.  She had her hair done every three weeks.  She had since shed at least 40 pounds, she wore whatever she could find and she kept her hair cut short with a pair of pinking shears.  Didn’t matter anymore.  Didn’t matter to the guy who used the collapse of society to try for some forced sex.  Didn’t matter to her when she sliced and diced him with a K-bar.

She had seen zombies eating a deer.  Zombies were not just a preying on humans, they were competitors.  She killed every zombie she could find.  When she wasn’t, she was preparing the family cabin by boarding up all of the first-floor entrances.  It was hard driving the 3" sheetrock screws by hand.  She didn’t dare use a hammer and nails.

Marvin had stocked a lot of food in the cabin, at least six month’s worth for the family.  With careful rationing, she might get two years out of it.  He had also bought seeds, she was thinking of how to build an elevated garden.

She hoped that the other legends were true, that zombies froze in the winter.  Otherwise, she’d never get a break.

There were two more.  Good thing Marvin had bought a lot of ammunition.

Pffft ka-chunk.  Pffft ka-chunk.
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The challenge suggested that, after the story, the writer posts the recipe for the drink. This is the Zombie recipie:

* 1 measure dark rum
* 1 measure white rum
* ½ measure apricot brandy
* 2 measures pineapple juice
* ½ measure lime juice
* 2 teaspoons powdered sugar
* Garnish: cocktail cherry and pineapple wedge

Add all the ingredients into a cocktail mixer with ice and shake, then pour into a hurricane glass. Spear the pineapple and cherry onto a cocktail stick and place on the edge of the glass, finally add a straw.