Planning deaths for zombies

Author's note: Okay, this was a plot bunny that just wasn't going away, but it's kinda weird. I love the original 'Dawn of the dead' movie and it's about four people holed up in a mall, whilst zombies have taken over. I just couldn't help but wonder what would happen if the team were there instead. This is the conclusion, but it's very much a spoof, rather than anything resembeling serious.

This is the second time I've posted this fic so if it seems familiar, that's why. Thanks go to Viskey and Pheral for betaing it for me and to JFM for being my only reviewer last time it was posted.

Chapter One

It started out as an ordinary day, but then most days do. Especially ordinary ones.

Colonel John 'Hannibal' Smith was on location shooting scenes for his latest movie, 'Aquamaniac IV: The Aq is back' when he first saw one of the living dead although at the time he'd assumed it was just another of the drunken crew turning up for work.

It wasn't until the 'drunk' grabbed a cameraman, ripped a chunk of his throat out and started eating it, that Hannibal's special forces training kicked in and alerted him that something was not quite right.

Upon returning to his trailor, he immediately picked up the phone, dialed a familiar number and knew action would be instant. Within 10 minutes, they were there.

He handed over 7.50 and tucked into a large ham and pineapple pizza.

Once finished, he decided that he'd better give the rest of the team a call and let them know what was happening.

He called up Face first, interrupting a liaison between the lieutenant and a companion. They had all meet Face's new friend Sandy and Face had confided in them how he felt a bond between them that he'd never felt with a girl before.

None of them could wanted to tell him that Sandy was a transvestite. It was something he'd have to find out for himself.

He told Face to call the others and said for them to meet outside the VA, ASAP.

It didn't take long to get there, mainly as a narrative of Hannibal driving would be boring, and soon the team was united in the very distinctive black and gray van with red detail, that nearly always seemed to go undetected.

Hannibal described what he'd seen, the drunken crew member, the unprovoked attack and the hideous violence.

The team were silently very sympathetic, but displayed little of the emotion other than a few knowing looks not wanting their macho image to be ruined by displaying real emotions. They were soldiers, damn it!

They could see the carnage these flesh eating monsters were causing. In front of them one shuffled along and did nothing. God, what could they do to escape the horrors?

Murdock's strange sixth sense told him they'd find an answer to their problems if they took a left at the next turning. His instincts were right, as before them was a unsupervised helicopter, fully loaded with fuel. What are the chances of that happening!

BA told them he'd follow in the van, as firstly, he'd never leave his van. And secondly, he'd never fly, especially not with Murdock.

The rest of them rolled their eyes, certain he was given the same script week after week, and nodded in agreement.

Before he could leave, Hannibal pulled out a glass of freshly chilled milk, saying they should have one last drink, just for luck, before they went their separate ways. He watched as BA's body fell to the ground and guessed that they should have caught him and not let him land in the pool of blood on the floor.

They got him on the helicopter and headed up. They flew aimlessly in one direction, not able to come up with a better plan.

It was after nearly 8 hours of continuous flight that Hannibal spotted the huge building. He woke Face and Murdock up, which worried him as Murdock should have been flying, and told them to take a look.

Fortunately, the mall was equipped with a heli-pad too. Hannibal and Face jumped out, leaving Murdock to wonder why they didn't wait until he landed before doing so, and checked around.

The car park was full, not unusual for this time of day at the weekend.

Looking in through a sky light revealed that the zombies were only on the first floor, there were none on the second floor. Either they couldn't climb stairs, the lifts were broken, or they hadn't finished browsing downstairs yet.

They found a small room that was cut off from the rest of the mall, and broke in. They used the still unconscious BA as a mat to land on.

Hannibal told Murdock to get some sleep, whilst he and Face smoked some cigars and looked fantastically moody in the shadows of the room.

Once they were all well rested, they decided to check out the mall and all the zombies in it. By this time, BA had also woken up and vowed to get revenge on them all. His favorite top was ruined and blood was so hard to get out once it had dried.

To get to the mall they had to go past boiler rooms and such and they found a small room which housed all the electrics, plans for the mall and also some large sets of keys to open all the doors of various stores. Lucky really that they had just been left out in plain sight and put away properly.

Face spotted a panel that had switches to turn on various power points. "Hey, how about some music to cover any noise we make?" He asked, wondering why the words were vaguely familiar.

Hannibal looked round to the lieutenant and studied the various switches. "Might as well have power on everything, you never know when we might need it." He said, also plagued by the familiar speech. He shrugged it off and went back to looking over the plans in front of him for no reason other than it made him look like he knew what he was doing.

"Wait a minute." Murdock said before Face touched the switches. "Are you sure we want power on everything. I mean for a start, the tannoy, how annoying?"

"Yeah, and what about the escalators, there were none of those suckers on the second floor and if you turn the power on the escalators they'd be up in no time." BA said. The others were curious as to how he knew there were no zombies on the second floor, as he'd been unconscious at the time, but let it go.

"Of course we need power on everything, guys. If the zombies can't climb stairs they won't be able to get on the escalators." Hannibal reasoned.

"Yeah, and what's the worse than can happen?" Face said, turning on all the switches. Music started to play, that really, really bad mall music. If that didn't drive the zombies away, nothing would.

Once they had everything sorted, they made their way into the mall. They immediately saw that at least 15 zombies had already made their way up the escalators and were wandering all around the place.

"Told ya they'd get up here." BA said in his usual gruff manor.

"We need to stop them from getting up here, if too many of them find their way to the second floor, we'll be over run." Hannibal said, stating the obvious.

"Couldn't we just press the emergency stop button?" Murdock queried.

"Damn it, it's too dangerous! Those things are getting closer all the time, what can we do, out-run them?" Hannibal snapped.

"I could out walk them." Murdock said. Watching the zombies make very little progress.

"Well go on then." Hannibal replied. He hated being challenged.

"Guys, this is madness, just calm down a minute." Face intervened. "We'll think of something, just please, don't do anything stupid, okay?"

"Whattcha talking about, Faceman. Crazy fool could walk over there and turn the escalator off without anything happening." BA said.

"Look, the way I see it is our only other option is to go back where we just came from and turn the escalators off there. Now I don't know about you, but to me that seems pretty drastic." Murdock said.

The others nodded their heads in agreement.

"Okay guys. I'm gonna make a run for it. Try and distract them for me, huh?" Murdock asked.

"Good luck, Captain." Hannibal said, patting Murdock on the shoulder.

"Thanks, Colonel." Murdock turned to Face and pulling his jacket off, he gave it to his friend. "Face..."

"Oh wow, Murdock, you're giving me your jacket! I can't believe it, I've always loved it..." Face was cut off when Murdock pulled it away from the conman

"Hey! You're just holding it for me." Murdock explained. "Okay, here I go."

The zombies were spread far apart now, having slowly ambled around for a bit before noticing the four men standing together. They were pain stakingly slowly making their way to the men.

Murdock carefully moved towards them, whilst the others tried to draw the zombies attention away from the pilot. They shouted a few words at them, but it didn't seem to be working, so they gave up and decided to spit on the zombies on the lower level instead.

Murdock managed to evade the zombies and reached the top of the escalator. He saw three zombies on the contraption heading towards him. He looked around, trying to work out how to stop it. All he could see was a large, bright red button saying 'Emergency stop' on it.

The zombies were getting closer and he sensed the ones behind him closing in too. He took his chances and pressed the one button. The escalator stopped.

Unfortunately, the zombies were already at the top.

Murdock dived out of the way and headed back to the others, but in is haste, his cap fell off right next to several zombies. Murdock hesitated, not wanting to leave his cap behind.

"Murdock, leave it, we'll get another." Hannibal called.

"I can't..." Murdock said, torn over what he should do.

"It's just a cap." Face said.

"It's alright for you, you have a full head of hair." Murdock yelled back.

"Come on, Murdock. They're too close, just get out of there!" Hannibal yelled desperately. "Save yourself and leave it behind."

"We never left any caps behind in Nam!" Murdock shouted. He ran back to the cap, pushing zombies away in his path.

He reached it just as a zombie picked it up. They now both had a hold on it.

Murdock was lucky, the zombie was no longer interested in the blue hat and let it go. He had, however, become more interested in the piece of meat holding onto the over end of the hat. The zombie grabbed hold of Murdock's arm and bit into the pilots forearm.

Murdock yelled in pain, and as the zombie chewed on the piece he'd pulled off, he managed to escape back to the safety of his unit.

"Are you okay, Murdock?" Face asked.

"No, I've just been bitten! That means I'm gonna die, right?" Murdock said.

"Try not to think about it." Hannibal added. Turning to face the others he mouthed the words 'He's dead.' to them.

"Yeah, man, save your strength." BA said inwardly glad. The guy did serious piss him off at times.

Face used a handkerchief BA gave him to tie round the wound. He then placed the jacket over Murdock's shoulders.

"Hey, give me your hat and I'll put it on for you." Face said, smiling kindly at his now infected, dying friend.

"Ah, crap!" Murdock said. "I dropped it."

"You did your best, Cap'n." Hannibal comforted. "Let's go back upstairs and tend to Murdock's wounds. Then we need to kill all the zombies in the mall so we can shop in peace."

"Now that's a plan." Face said.

After Murdock has had his injuries tended to, cleaned and bandaged, the team return to the mall to clear the zombies out. There are even more zombies on the second floor now, the living dead having mastered climbing stairs. Crafty bastards.

The team armed themselves with several guns each and carefully approached the decaying monsters in front of them. They had devised a plan, four minds working together as one finely tuned machine to protect themselves from the zombies. The plan itself was masterful, creative and a work of genius.

BA held onto the former table top as Hannibal nailed the wood into the escalators making it impossible for the zombies to get to the top without amusingly sliding back down to the bottom. Face and Murdock held the zombies at bay, whilst the other men worked. Once completed they admired the handy work.

They were strangely proud of the work they'd done, although it wasn't one of the most technical pieces ever. Knowing that they were now safe on the second floor from the zombies they took a moment to ponder why they'd stood at the bottom of the escalator's to nail the wood to the stairs as they were now trapped on the lower floor with a huge amount of zombies and more pouring in all the time.

"What are we gonna do?" Face asked, freaking out slightly.

"There must be something here we can use to our advantage," Hannibal said scanning the area. "After all, we're special forces trained."

"Oh, look, over there." Murdock said pointing to the shop past a few gross looking zombies. They looked in the direction Murdock pointed to and saw the Army supplies store.

"Good, Murdock," Hannibal said "We can go there and try to figure something out." They all battled there way through the crowd and managed to find the key to the store just before anyone got attacked. Very convenient.

Upon sealing themselves safely in the shop, they started to look for things that they could use. They stacked boxes on ammunition, hand grenades, dynamite and machine guns up in a neat stack in front of the door.

"Well, that should keep those nasty critters at bay until we can find something useful." Hannibal said.

"You know, I saw a film once where something like this happened." Murdock said.

"What happened? How did they escape?" Face asked.

"I dunno. Woody Woodpecker was on the other side and I switched over." Murdock said. He then spotted something that could help them get back to the top floor. He moved over to get a closer look. He smiled and picked up the tent, showing it to the others.

"What are we gonna do with that?" BA asked.

"Let me explain..." Murdock began.

The scene is cut then so we don't hear the actual plan, it makes it more mysterious. We go back as they are ready to put the plan in action.

"Are you sure this is gonna work, Murdock?" Face said.

"Well, let's find out shall we?" Hannibal said. He turned to BA. "Okay, start the fire."

A pile of 'The zombie survival guide' books were piled up and set alight. Murdock and Hannibal took a section of the tent that was cut into a doormat sized section and then held it over the fire.

"Are you ready, Face?" Hannibal asked.

"You're sure about this, Murdock?" He asked, still nervous.

Murdock nodded. "I was told about it while I was in the Air force. Heat rises, it'll lift this bit of material and you up to the second floor where you can throw a rope back down to us. Simple."

They'd all been shocked to hear about heat rising, another military secret that everyone was keeping to themselves. If this information were to get into the wrong hands who knew what could happen.

"Here goes." Face said. He moved back a little and took a run up, jumping onto the material. The material slipped straight from Hannibal and Murdock's hands and the next things they all heard was Face screaming as he was set alight.

In his panic (and forgetting his training to never panic) he stumbled into a pile of zombies who started to bite him.

The others bravely managed to rescue what was left of him and moved from the horde of dead.

"Quick, let's get to the lift." Hannibal said directing his men towards the contraption.

"There's a lift!" Face said.

"Of course. The have to have access for disabled people and parents with prams and pushchairs. I didn't want to use it in case someone who really needed came along. I'd have felt awful." Hannibal explained.

The all climbed in. Taking note of the weight restriction, BA left most of his gold outside. Face was being held up by Murdock and BA.

BA's head hung low, sadly. Sighing deeply, he started to speak. "Look..."

Face cut him off. "It's OK, BA. I'm gonna be fine." Face reassured him.

"No man. My shirt. Look at it! It's completely wrecked now."

Hannibal laid a comforting hand on BA's shoulder. "We'll get you a new shirt, BA, I promise you that."

"How Hannibal. The shop that stocks them is downstairs." He mourned the loss.

"If it's the last thing any of us do, we'll get you a new shirt BA." Hannibal said, looking to his other men to back him up.

Murdock looked at his wounds and at the man next to him, bleeding everywhere. "It probably will be the last thing we do." He whispered to Face.

'The zombie survival guide' is a real book by Max Brooks. It's very good for all zombie enthusiasts and is pretty good in general if you want to find out the best places/weapons/terrain to go to survive a zombie invasion. I sleep a little better at night knowing I have this very handy guide close by.