Zombie Outbreak Hit My Town While I Was Trapped Inside a Flood Control Tunnel

Zombie outbreak started in the storm drain under my town while I was already inside it. Tuesday morning, six-forty. The flow meter at Pump Station 4 was reading numbers that made no sense for a dry October. The water in the tunnel was black. Not brown, not silty — black, with a smell like copper pennies and a dead animal. We went in to check the joints. We found a man pressed against the trash rack at the North Junction who had been in that water long enough that his skin had gone the color of wet newsprint. He grabbed my coworker’s sleeve. That’s how it started. Over the next seven days, three of us tried to survive inside four and a half miles of concrete barrel running under a town that was already gone. No phones. No help coming. Just a generator burning through diesel, a vending machine, thirty-eight gallons of water, and the sound of things in the tunnel reacting every time our pumps ran. This is what happened. What You’ll See: 00:00 - The flow readings that didn’t make sense and the smell that did 05:20 - Going down the ladder and finding the man at the trash rack 12:45 - Getting out, Omar’s arm, and Nita shutting the gate nobody asked her to shut 19:30 - The town goes in the time it takes to drive eleven blocks 26:00 - First night in the station, the pump runs, and they come 34:15 - Thursday — rescuing Carla and Trey from Shaft 9 42:00 - Bud’s leg, the gate, and what happened in the junction chamber 51:30 - Hollis Dunn shows up with keys that shouldn’t exist and a plan that costs someone else 1:01:00 - Carla’s hand, the washdown tap, and the mistake I made 1:09:45 - Monday morning, four AM, what Carla chose 1:18:20 - The walk — two and a half miles through the barrel with them in it 1:25:00 - Eight-forty-eight, the air changes, and four minutes to the platform 1:30:10 - What the river took, what we didn’t say, and the checkpoint Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. All characters, locations, events, and incidents in this story are entirely made up. The town of Kesterton, the Dunmore Diversion, Pump Station 4, and every person named in this story do not exist. Any resemblance to real places, real people, or actual events is coincidental. The zombie outbreak scenario depicted here is fictional. Some Related Tags: Zombie outbreak story, zombie story, outbreak story, zombie survival story, horror survival story