I parked it outside the gym and when I came back a couple hours later it fired up, then died immediately. After that it would only crank. Thought the battery might be low because it was cranking slow, I tried jumping it twice but it did not help much. Got it towed home, think it might be the fuel pump but I don't know.

My car:
87 z28
305 I think its an F engine code
5 speed
Edelbrock performer intake and carb

 

Do you have spark ?
You can see if there is fuel in your float bowl bye opening the throttle and see accelerator pump spray.

 

Fuel/air in reasonable proprtions; spark at somewhere near the right time; compression.

The 3 "magic ingredients" that make an engine run.

All you gotta do FIRST, is figure out which one went missing all the sudden.

Probably not compression, unless the timing set failed; which would ordinarily be, the phenolic "teeth" getting stripped off of the chinesium "gums" of the cam sprocket. If it's that, then the motor will whirl over as though there's nothing even hooked to the starter for awhile; then presently will spit back through the intake acoupla times; then maybe almost kinda sorta somewhat try to run for acoupla cyls; then pop in the exhaust a few times; then go back to whirling aimlessly. If your motor isn't doing that, i.e. sounds like the starter is having to do its normal work load, then ... not the timing set.

OK, you're down to fuel/air, and spark.

Air... not too much to say about that. You're not in deep space, are you? You're on the surface of the Earth somewhere? OK, you have air. That leaves fuel. If the missing one of the "big 3" is fuel, then you should be able to supply it, by pouring acoupla ounces of it into the intake, and it should start and run briefly until that fuel is consumed. (be careful with this, stray fuel can catch fire unexpectedly)

If it's not one of those 2 things, it's a spark problem.

Go do the test, tell us what happened.