You’d never believe it, but the true badasses, the real fucking heroes of this entire thing were not the soldiers (‘we are SO ready for the last war’), the police, the government, the “human spirit” or even Zack. No. The real fucking heroes are the pizza delivery guys. I shit you not.

It really got fucked when the only place I could find was a foot locker, about 3 feet square to hide in. I closed it on myself and it somehow stayed that way…

Think about it, the very idea of pizza delivery sprang up once folks decided to barricade themselves in suburban homes to keep dangerous minorities away from their lives and their expensive shit. This is kind of the same situation, except the trend of barricading your entire family extended itself into an actual life and death matter.

How The Drivers took hold I will never know…but they did. At first they spent their time fortifying their own shops, stealing generators, living off of stored ingredients. They had enough to support themselves while they got their shit together.

They swarmed, they always do, at first it was only a few, but eventually I could hear them piling up…

They were on some road warrior shit. Half of them were packing anyway, not the pimply college kids working a summer job. Most of them got chewed up as soon as the shit hit the fan. I’m talking about the lifers, the guys with DUIs on their record, no education, NRA memberships, bad backs and drug problems. Those guys took over.

Think about it, all these people barricaded in their homes, churches, whatever, they needed food. And The Drivers could get it to them.

I’m sure they only delivered a few actual pizzas initially, after their stores ran out, eventually they became more like paid scouts, heading out into the white zones to pick up spare food and deliver it to whoever paid.

They were piled so high on top of the box that parts of it started to dent in. I could hear them, inches away from me, snarling and biting each other. Trying to get to me.

And I will say it again; they were fucking bad-ass. Their uniforms changed from dorky shorts and embroidered polo shirts to heavily reinforced leather and work fabrics. Some of them even worked up some chain mail to cover the weak parts. It helped protect them but made them a little slow, which affected tips. The crazy part is they maintained their corporate identities. They hacked the patches and insignias off of their old uniforms and stitched them onto their new ones.

They also did insane things to their cars. Delivery drivers already know how to change their oil, and do general repairs, but who knew they knew how to weld steel plating, wire insanely bright halogen light sets, throw in new suspension and beefed up engines to handle the extra weight. These things were fucking tanks, with gun ports, spikes everywhere, and yes, even those damn light up pizza siren things.

So there they were, gangs of roving maniacs, out saving the world (for a price). The Drivers. They stayed loyal to their colors too. Dominos was the first to get a foothold in the market, on account of a local general manager, Louie Bruno, being an ex green-beret/martial arts expert/general Brooklyn bad ass. I heard that before the storm once, he was ambushed on his way to make a night drop at the bank. Instead of giving up the money like those corporate training videos told him to do, he beat the shit out of the guy, grabbed his gun and chased him to his car, calling him a pussy the entire time.

I couldn’t move, they were right on top of me. Their spit and blood and fluid was leaking into the box, and I kept puking on myself from their smell… after a few hours I was dry heaving, an hour after that it was blood, and I kept passing out…

Louie trained his Dominos guys. They were the original bad asses. They didn’t fuck with guns very much. They would roll up, three or four of them would jump out of the back of a van/tank with Lobos and machetes and other randomly thrown together melee weapons. 2 would go to work clearing Zack out of the delivery area while the other two would unload the goods onto the customer.

Little Caesar’s was next up, and they were pretty hardcore too. Remember their mascot, the little cartoon dictator or whatever? He had those pizzas on the end of that fucked up pitchfork? Well The Caesars had those things too. Cast iron, two prongs, long as hell, strapped to their back. I received a delivery once, the driver was getting ready to give me the food when a quick one surprised him. Before I could even start bitching that he forgot my Cinna Sticks, he had his fork out and buried straight into the G’s chest.

Fucking thing was stuck there, thrashing around like crazy on the end of that stick. The Driver just held him there, pinned to the pavement like it was nothing. I then realized why they made their weapons so long. Same concept as a dog catchers leash/lasso/pole thing, keep the rabid shits as far away as possible. He didn’t seem to mind. It was damn hard calculating 20 percent with a thrashing zombie 5 feet away from me.

After about 4 hours I came to… gunshots…someone else was in the room…

Loyalty and turf became a huge fucking deal. Delivery zones became sacred, if 2 opposing crews ended up on the same road there wasn’t any kind of discussion. These massive steel hulking bulldozer fucking cars would just slam right into each other until one crew was dead. They really did stick to their own zones though, so collisions were rare, but the roads were so fucked that detours were inevitable.

I heard about a Papa John’s squad coming across a lone Domino’s Driver in their zone. The Domino had gotten separated from his crew on a botched delivery and wandered into the wrong zone.

The Papas were particularly gnarly. A lot folks said it was on account of all the sugar in their sauce and dough. Some said it was their mob-bred roots. Anyway, they took this poor fucker, stripped off his armor, strapped him to the front of their transport, and went about their business making deliveries. The whole time he was there he acted as a kind of lightning rod for Zack. They would all swarm on him and rip him apart, leaving room for The Papas to get paid. Eventually he turned, of course, so they wasted him and left him strapped there. Hood ornament.

The more shots I heard the louder everything around me get, as layers of them fell off of my putrid stronghold.

Eventually, resources ran so low that The Drivers became pretty hardcore about their money, or whatever it was you were giving them in exchange for food. When it got really desperate, the luckiest houses were the ones that had women. Those pornos where the pizza guy stops by to deliver the “extra sausage” pizza and ends up railing two already-naked (she just came over to use the shower) stay-at-home moms… well that shit happened all the time…except in this version the pizza guy is covered in gore and the moms are all malnourished and half-crazy. Nice.

Payment of any kind was serious business too. I heard about a customer who owed them money for like 3 months. After three months The Drivers, a crew from Pizza Hut (pussies by driver standards) came to collect. They knocked down every door in the house, and raided the place. They grabbed everything of any kind of value. Not money but booze, pornos, prescription drugs, medical supplies, clothes, books, magazines, anything they wanted. They took all of this as payment and left. And they didn’t stop to put the doors back up.

Eventually they ran out of bullets…I could tell they had switched to melee weapons now as I could hear the sounds of stabbing, slicing, bones breaking, rotted skulls caving in…

They got close to me, I could hear them killing the last layer, and…”FUCK!” I screamed as 3 feet of rusty pipe came punching through the roof of the box, right through my calf…

“FUCK! FUCK! FUCK! FUCK! YOU FUCKERS ARE NOT GETTING ANY KIND OF TIP FROM ME!! FUCK!!”

To be continued