I remember when people used to joke about the zombie apocalypse. Fantasize about it. I get it. It’s that excuse to bash someone’s brains in with a baseball bat, or cleave them in half with a sharp edge while they shamble towards you, like some geriatric who didn’t take care of themselves. Maybe it’s someone you knew before the event, someone you didn’t like and in this scenario you’re turning their brain to mush in a lawless land where there are no repercussions. Hell, it would even make the world a better place, and no one could deny you the pleasure… of duty, of course. Personally, I’d rather give them a fighting chance, and the sentience to look me in the eye when they were beaten into undeath, so I could do it all over again.
Sure I thought about it. It was all the rage at some point. You couldn’t swing your dick without hitting a zombie movie, tv show, videogame, books… canon, just everywhere. Like most genres of anything, ninety percent of it was shit, and even though I wasn’t some fanboy for it, I absorbed enough to get the gist. Of what I’d seen, rarer still was an explanation of what happens to the person who’s bitten, inhaled the virus, or died naturally unrelated to the phenomena. Was the soul trapped, forced to watch their body shred through loved ones, only to be beheaded if they were lucky? Or were their minds rewritten and they were overtaken, tricked into doing terrible things, only to turn endlessly in a situation even a slight semblance of intelligence could get them out of. I’ll jump ahead a bit for you and say it’s a little bit of both.
When it happened, it was like a little bit of everything could imagine, but a whole lot you could not. Panicking masses? Oh yeah. If there was a hero out there with a stupid hat to save everyone and lead them, I never saw one. The power was gone well before we could get any tangible info on what the fuck was actually going on. Again, the upper tier sold us out and the rich fled for their islands, bunkers and safe houses leaving the rest of us to deal with the shit. I was surprised how well we gelled, worked together and how quickly bitter grudges were buried for the greater good. There I was, standing shoulder to shoulder with some dick who only showed up when he knew I had weed, and another guy who’s girlfriend I fucked while he was on a business trip last year.
You don’t realize how many people there are in your municipality until they’re trying to eat you. I lived in a town of not even five thousand people and while that IS low, you’ll also realize how few you can put down before you can’t even lift your arms anymore. You regret how little cardio you did when things were good, and how even after months of this shit you still can’t run like that guy on your bus who smoked a pack a day since grade four. I could maintain a brisk jog long enough to keep ahead of any mob and back to base. In a small town, there are a lot of familiar faces and you have to get over that. Or you should.
But this guy. This fucking guy. Back in the day he took a girl I thought I really liked, until she cheated on me with this jackass. Oh, but look at him now. One of his arms, dangling by a thread, his jaw broken, clearly in a failed attempt to stop all that caked blood from getting on his face. I’d had a few opportunities like this and almost always took them. I had a sharp weapon for quick dispatches that didn’t take much energy, my Edge, and a blunt weapon, my End for occasions like this. I waved the others on and picked off the shamblers in the front of the line. Fated to be, I slipped on a scalp I loosed with a sweet flourish from the saw blade I had welded to a nine-iron. I tried to catch myself but hit my head on his steel-toe work boot and winded myself.
I was out for a second, since the fucker only had a chance to scratch my neck with his teeth. I got him off fast and took the head off clean, furious, terrified and turned full circle to take on the rest closing in. But they weren’t. Now they were just passing around me like water around a stone in a brook. I was fucked. He got me. I’m one of them now. I planted the nine-iron into a crack in the street and thrust my head forward, to end it right there. I wasn’t being defiled. Not me. I had this planned out after I saw my first comrade turn and did it for him, but I was alone. It was my only way out. My head stopped as though a thousand invisible hands wrapped their fingers around it and yanked back. It was too late.
An enraged scream vented the rest of my breath from my lungs, and that elusive, prolonged sprint was finally mine. When one first turns, they can still do it all and do it well. We called them dashers, the ones who hadn’t damaged their legs by running without heed of obstacle yet, or had them crippled by necrosis. I saw my comrades rushing to close the gates, but could still recall a weak point in the perimeter. One of the gates was closed only by a sturdy latch one could reach through and turn open… if one had the capacity to think of it. I tore my way through the woods, cutting my legs on branches, cracking a femur against a rock during my kamikaze dash. There were others there already watching me through the gate and I wanted to eat them. No, I HAD to eat them and they were right there. But I couldn’t think to reach for the latch. I didn’t think of the weapons hanging off my belt. I rattled the gate in rage before my last sentient thought prompted me to run. Away.
The only purpose now is to feast and propagate. Feeding was akin to the pleasure of sex, though its purpose was the same, in that the former was reward for the latter. I ran into a mob on the edges of town, where my status as a dasher drew their attention. I had the best odds of catching one of the living and if they followed, they could get a piece. I wrenched my leg shortly into the shamble and was reduced to one of them as the last of my conscious thoughts were left back home. I don’t know how much time was spent like this, since the concept of moments was long gone. We met stragglers and the odds of conversion or escape were pretty much even. To feed was what made the smell, the sights and the deeds all worth it. I knew it after my first meal like this – it overrode the horror, the rot, the company.
We were compelled to join a horde at some point, so that one in a dozen, we were a dozen in thousands. Our sieges were the stuff of legend, sheer numbers pouring into settlements and overwhelming convoys. In a state where all are truly equal, very few were able to feed. But some always fed, I saw it. The first variant I encountered was a tall woman with sharpened metal points piercing through her skin. She couldn’t use weapons, but rather was one. She was quicker, stronger, predatory. Her and others like her dragged massive hordes with them and they were always a priority to any resistance we faced, leaving us drones free to continuously inundate with the crush of rotting flesh.
Once, during a march, a few of us on the edges were drawn by the sounds of a baby crying. The young lacked the strength to carry on the bloodline of the undead, and were therefore wholly consumed. We could not resist. One of us blindly shambled through a veil of camouflage tarp and fell headlong down a steep hill. The rest of us followed suit, and almost everyone broke yet another bone. It was a campground, mostly deserted but there were people here somewhere. Another cry said so. Nearly a hundred strong, we flowed through the network of campers towards the source of the sound. Of meat. I could hear others being killed, pleased in some form that there would be more for me. It didn’t matter how many were left – there was no option to turn back, tell the horde, there was no tactic or logic. Without warning I felt a push from the back and fell headlong into a one of the campground’s washroom stalls. When I turned I saw a woman holding the baby, right there, and when I reached for it, she closed the door on me. So there I was, trapped in a plastic tomb, undead and furious, the blue water, the shit, and me. It never got old. I never calmed down. All I wanted to do was feed on what was surely long gone and had not an idea at all about how to do it other than push ahead, stupidly. Time passed yet again and the already rotten rotted some more. Then, something strange happened. My eyes shifted away from where I last saw that succulent, living red meat and to something I’d yet to consider. The handle. Clumsily I swatted it open and pushed through to the open, fresh air. Everything was different, and with the function of the eye rediscovered, I looked to my sides. My hands felt at the handles of the weapons hanging at my side. Then they grasped them. Drew them. Wielded them. It was time to get my fill.
This Earth: A Fantasy World 