1

 

No one ever talks about the poo. I’m not joking. No one. With volumes and volumes of literature about the damnable things, and one movie after another on the subject, you’d think someone somewhere would take the practical approach and discuss the freaking poo. But nope. Doesn’t anyone wonder where all that human viscera, brains and flesh go after they’ve been digested? Huh? Okay, well, try this – did it ever occur to anyone that a large part of why people get caught by these things so easily is because in the course of running away, they slip on zombie poo, fall down, and get eaten?

Look, when you’ve spent days on end without sleep, wondering every ten seconds if you’re about to die a horrifying, painful, lingering death, you start thinking about stuff like this. I mean, sure – zombie poo wasn’t exactly at the top of my list of things to worry about when all the insanity started. It wasn’t. Then, about a billion attacks later, when I was hiding out in what used to be a Circle K, I saw a guy running past the shattered window, a slobbering zombie in hot pursuit. Looked like the guy might make it, but then he slipped on something and it was all over in a matter of seconds.

Later on, after the feeding frenzy was over, the zombie had bumbled off, and there was less of the guy to be grossed out by, I ventured outside to see if maybe he’d been carrying a weapon I could use. No weapon, but I did find what he’d slipped on. And believe me, if you think cat poo smells awful, it’s Chanel No. 5 compared to zexcrement. Yeah, that’s my word for zombie poo. Zombie excrement – zexcrement – get it? Whatever.

Now, you might be wondering how I was able to identify the source of the stinky stuff. Easy. There was a smushed eyeball in it. Blech! And what looked like a piece of vertebra, but I wasn’t about to sift through it to be sure. To say my disgust level reached a new high that day is to win the Nobel Prize for Understatements.

But where are my manners? Ha. Manners. Like anyone needs them at this point. Anyhow, my name is Zara. Okay, no, it isn’t. But there’s no one left to point at me and go, “Hey, that’s not your name!” My real name is flat-out lame, and since I’ve always wanted one that sounded cool, I picked “Zara” because I like it, and…shut up.

So I’m not a zombie hunter. Let’s get that one straight. More like a zombie avoider. I’ve gotten good at it, too, evidenced by the simple fact that none of them have so much as touched a skin cell. On me, that is. When I happen to encounter a pocket of humans who, like me, have eluded the atrocities roaming our streets, I try to share with them all the stuff I’ve learned about zombavoidence. Yep. Another word I made up that I think fits the situation nicely.

I believe it’s been about two years now, since the first occurrence…occurred that started what everyone was already calling “the zombie apocalypse.” Personally, I think we brought it on ourselves by talking about it all the time. Like our collective fears spawned the real thing or something. All those stories and movies I mentioned became the catalyst. I couldn’t tell you how that works, but right now, it so doesn’t even matter.

So this, then, is my story. And since I have no competition in the literary field anymore, I anticipate this will be a best seller. Hahahaha!!!! Right. Sorry. Being alone for too long does stuff to your mind. Okey-dokey. Now, if this was all there was – page after page of me rambling on about zombies, fake names, insanity, and poo, I’d send myself a rejection letter. But it’s not. Something else began to happen around the middle of the second year, and I figured if a day ever came when books were in demand again, this one would give posterity a clear, honest picture of how their new world happened.

Keeping track of the date had become a ridiculous habit, so I can’t tell you when, exactly, the thing happened that told me everything was about to change. I just know it was raining, and I was sitting in an attic blissfully free of moaning brain-suckers (they went after intestines a lot, too, but seemed to save the brain for last, like it was dessert or something). The neighborhood in which I’d wandered had already been invaded – I knew this because of the number of skeletons scattered around. I even saw one up in a tree, but couldn’t get my mind around how that had happened, so ignored it. All of the houses’ doors had been broken down, their interiors torn apart, and other than the all-too-familiar, wretched odor of zexcrement, the place was deserted. I won’t say it was a ghost town, because no self-respecting ghost would be caught – ha! I almost said “caught dead” – in such a smelly place.

I’d learned to wrap something around my face with whatever herb I could find tucked into the folds to keep the stench from making me ill, another survival technique I’d gladly shared with others whenever they were around.

What made me furious was how those people often ignored my advice. And why? Maybe because I didn’t wave a gun at them first. Or maybe because I’m only seventeen. And a girl. And not athletic, much less impressive-looking in a “I can kick your butt” kind of way. I’m about five-foot-six and thin, but still curvy. Before the attacks, I was about five-foot-six and a lot curvier. Not having access to fast food and Little What’s Her Name snacks is an effective way to lose weight. Just sayin’.

So on this rainy day as I sat in the attic of what looked like a nice home once, I was staring out the small window at one end of the long space, noticing how, ironically, the zexcrement had turned out to be a powerful fertilizer. The grass in this neighborhood was an almost jewel-like green, and all the trees were lousy with thick leaves. Not too strange had it been the middle of summer. But unless the advent of zombies had somehow screwed with the weather patterns, the light snowfall of the night before told me summer wasn’t quite here yet.

“Huh,” I said aloud. I talked to myself out loud whenever I was sure nothing could hear me, to make sure my vocal chords were still working. “That’s some powerful manure.”

And that was when I saw him. A zombie in a business suit. Strange. Why? Well, one thing no one had anticipated in all their zombie-telling was the fact that as soon as person turned (assuming he or she had avoided being consumed), the clothes came off. You think the blood on their twisted faces was gross? Try dealing with an out-of-shape, elderly male zombie with everything – and I mean everything – hanging out! That may well be the true horror of this so-called apocalypse.

Yet there one stood in a dark gray business suit, strolling through the rain, and staring around. When he got to the side lawn of the house I was in, he stopped directly below the window. I shrank back, thinking he had somehow sensed or smelled me. But then he moved on. Only right before he did, he spoke.

Dude! Zombies don’t speak! Ever! Other than the moaning thing, that is. But this one, all dressed up like he was on his way to the office, had said, “Yes. Good thing.” He’d spoken in a monotone, his voice raspy, but in the silence of the day, it had carried clearly to my shocked ears…okay, my ears weren’t shocked, per se. I mean, if I’d had them connected to wires by little clips and then plugged the wires into an outlet, yeah. They could be shocked. But…oh, come on! You know what I'm saying!

After he’d gone, I tried to figure out what this could mean. I’m pretty good at deducing things. I’m even good at coming up with clever sayings and bad puns. Like if a zombie bit a pig and it got away, then turned, and proceeded to turn all of the other pigs, we’d have a zombie aporkalypse. Hahahahah!!!! Crap. Did it again. Sorry.

What was I saying? Oh! I was wondering what…are you snickering at me? Stop it. Anyhow, after some deep thought, I realized that if there was one zombie that could talk, there would probably be others, or soon would be others. Did this mean they were regaining the ability to think, to reason? The next time a bunch of uncontaminated humans came around, I’d discuss this idea, see what they thought about all this.

A week later I found out. I had made my way to a store that looked as if it had, like the neighborhood, already been attacked and then abandoned. I knew the blasted things didn’t eat canned food, probably because they couldn’t get the cans open, so it was a good guess that there’d be some left. I crept inside (it never hurts to be cautious) and avoided the crunchier stuff on the floor as I made my way toward the canned items aisle. The store wasn’t all that big, but not as small as a convenience store, so there were lots of tall shelves behind which anything could be hiding.

When I got to the aisle where the soup was, I started browsing what hadn’t been taken or destroyed. I noticed a certain brand had gone virtually untouched and snorted. The sodium content in that kind of soup was enough to –

“You! Stop right there!”

I jumped, then froze. “It’s okay,” I said, trying to sound all cool and calm. Didn’t work. My voice was shaking so bad, I almost sounded like I was trying to sing.

“Are you damaged?”

“No.” I knew what the guy meant – it was everyone’s term for those who had been nibbled on or scratched but hadn’t yet turned. “I’m untouched.”

“Uh-huh. Turn around.”

I did. And no. This wasn’t where I found myself facing the most gorgeous guy on the planet, muscles bulging on bare arms, blah, blah. It’s where I found myself mere inches from a single-barrel shotgun, at the other end of which was a guy who looked like he’d lived in his mother’s basement before the attacks. I mean, he wasn’t wearing whitie-tighties or anything, but despite the growing lack of food sources, he was still pretty pudgy, the sparse stubble on his chubby cheeks making him look like a younger, slightly slimmer version of Michael Moore. And he wasn’t even a little bit gorgeous.

“Um, I was just getting some soup,” I said, jerking a thumb toward the shelves.

“I can see that. Strip.”

“What?! Are you out of your mind? I – no! Forget it, you pervert!”

He rolled his eyes and lowered the gun. “That’s not…I just wanted to check to make sure you didn’t have any z-damage.”

Huh. I liked that. “Z-damage.” I’d have to add that to my apocalypse lexicon. “I don’t. Trust me. Because I’m not getting undressed for you.”

He nodded, thrusting out his jaw, eyes narrowing. “Yeah, okay. You’re too coherent to be close to turning.”

When a person got injured by a zombie, that turning thing usually happened within the first hour or so. From when I’d entered the store until he said that, there had been enough time for me to start slurring my words a tiny bit had I been damaged. “Exactly,” I said. “Now may I please get some soup and a few other things? I’m starving.”

“Sure. Sorry if I scared you.”

“Yeah – same.” I began removing cans from the shelf, and then moved further down the aisle to see if I could find stuff that had been sealed well enough to survive two years without getting wormy and stuff.

“Are you alone?”

He was back. I hoped he wasn’t going to keep following me. That creeped me out. “Yeah. You?”

“No, there are about eight of us.”

Vienna sausages. I hated Vienna sausages. Not only did they taste gross, but they looked like tiny…wait. “Eight? That’s a lot. How did you all survive?”

“We’ve been moving around for the past two years, never staying long enough in one place to be tracked.”

That was one of my avoidance techniques, too. “Yep. Did the same.”

“Would you like to hang out with us? Safety in numbers and all that.”

“Not really. No offense. Unless you guys want pointers on avoiding the z, but it looks like you’ve got that figured out already.” I flashed a brief smile and headed into the next aisle. Jars. Good. Glass kept things well.

A lot of them had either fallen or been thrown to the floor, and I had a hard time not stepping on shards that would have pierced the soles of my shoes. But the ones way at the back were still intact. I reached in and snagged a jar of – hearts of palm? Huh? Oh, well. Why not?

“I don’t feel right about letting you go off by yourself again,” the guy said, once again behind me.

This was getting tedious, and not a little freaky. “I’ll be fine. I survived all this time without you guys. I’m pretty sure I can keep myself safe.”

“Okay. Hey, have you seen anything odd lately?”

“Like a talking zombie?”

“A what? Holy cow, you saw one that could talk?”

Aw, heck. Why had I said that? Stupid, stupid, stupid. I knew better than to make assumptions.

“That’s it – now you have to come back with me and talk to the others!”

“No I don’t.”

“Aw, come on. Do you know that this means?”

I had an idea, of course, which I explained already, but I so didn’t feel like even being around this guy, never mind having a council meeting with his buddies. “Yeah. I do. I’m done here. See ya.”

He zoomed around and blocked me. Great.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m not going to hurt you, and neither are my friends. But this is huge! We’d been speculating about what the next step in zombie evolution might be, and now you’ve proven us right! They are evolving!”

Yes, but it seems you haven’t. “So what? From what I saw, he didn’t look like he was ready to find religion or anything.”

“All right, look. Describe him to me, and I’ll let you pass.”

“I’ll describe him, and you’ll let me pass or I’ll merge one of these cans with your head.”

“I have a gun.”

“Well, I don’t…fine.” I cleared my throat. “He was dressed in a business suit, and said, ‘yes. Good thing.’ That was it. Then he wandered off.”

“You’re sure about that?”

As sure as I am that my foot and your crotch are about to have a meet-and-greet. “Of course I’m sure.”

“Okay.” He stood to the side and waved at me to go past.

To my surprise, he didn’t grab me as I went by. When I was near the door he called, “What’s your name?”

“Zara.”

“Cool. Nice to meet you Zara. Stay safe.”

So he thought my name was cool. Maybe he wasn’t such a dweeb after all.

 

2

 

 

There’s a lot to be said about no government. Because of the way things happened, we managed to avoid anarchy – probably because the people who would have gone all anarchic…al…ish – hadn’t lived long enough to cause it. Wait. Did that make sense? Sometimes I don’t know. I mean, I write this stuff, and then re-read it, and go, “Huh?”

In case whoever is reading this hasn’t figured it out, this is my journal. Not a typical one, to be sure. It’s me scribbling crap down on whatever paper I can find, holding it together with binder clips that I found in an office supply store, and toting it around with me in my handy-dandy backpack. Speaking of the office supply store, I still haven’t figured out why the place had been ransacked in the first place.

Maybe lots of other survivors, back when there were lots of other survivors, had snagged all the notebooks so they could write journals about what was going on. Who knows? All I can say is that by the time I found the place, all the notebooks, most of the paper, and pretty much all the writing implements were long gone. So were all the office break-room supplies, like coffee, coffee creamer, coffee makers, those peanut-butter cheese crackers that looked like they were manufactured in the remains of Three Mile Island, napkins, plasticware, all that. Which wasn’t a surprise. I knew the crackers and the rest of that stuff had once been there because the shelf labels said so.

Over the years, I did find a number of pens on the street, in the pocket protectors of dead nerds, and in a few convenient stores, so I had plenty to write with…with which to write? Aw, who cares? I liked that house with the attic as a place to do most of my writing, and was hoping to catch another glimpse of a chatty zombie, to be honest. But months passed and I didn’t see another one.

However. Yeah. Seems I started the proverbial ball rolling when I told Chubby Guy about it. I ran into him and a couple of his friends about four months later, when I went into a clothing store several blocks away. The weather was getting a teensy bit warmer, and I needed something less bulky to wear. Oh, and new shoes. A side-symptom of zombie apocalypses (is that a word?) is the huge amount of broken glass in the streets, and after a while, that wreaks havoc on the soles of your footwear.

So there I was, eying a likely cardigan, a pair of ankle boots in one hand, when I heard that old familiar greeting from days of yore:

“You! Stop right there!”

For real, dude? Was that something he and his friends had agreed on as their standard greeting? I sighed and turned around.

“It’s you!”

“If it isn’t,” I told him, after treating him to some serious eye-rolling, “someone has a lot of explaining to do. Why did you tell me to stop, by the way? I wasn’t even moving.”

“He says that to everyone,” said a girl standing next to him.

“Whatever. Listen, I’m getting tired of the pronouns. What’s your name? I believe I told you mine.”

“Zara?”

“Yup.”

“Chet.”

“Chet. That’s short for Chester, right? Like the Cheetah?”

The eye-rolling was returned in kind.

“He gets that a lot – or used to,” said the girl. “I’m his sister, Francine.”

“Nice to meet you. There still eight of you?”

Chet and Francine (that’s so much better than “they” or “she and the guy,” don’t you think?) exchanged a look.

“I take it you lost someone?” As I said this, I kicked off my old shoes, sat on the floor, and pulled on the boots, ignoring the lovely aroma of unwashed socks.

“Two,” Chet said. “They were the ones who knew how to use guns, so the rest of us have had to learn.”

“Learn? Learn what? How not to shoot yourself in the foot? Just point and pull the trigger. Zombies aren’t exactly hard to hit.” I stood up and took a few steps. The boots were almost a perfect fit. Awesome.

“Maybe not before, but things have changed.”

I gaped. “Wait. Have you seen any of the talking ones?”

Francine nodded, casting a quick sideways glance at Chet. “A bunch. And they wear clothes. We’ve been following them to see what they’re up to.”

“Clothes are a definite improvement,” Chet muttered, followed by “Hey!” when his sister punched him in the arm.

“They’re getting faster,” she told me. “That’s the main thing. I mean, they don’t, like, jump around or anything, but they’ve learned how to run.”

“Regular run, or spastic run?”

“Somewhere in between. And if they’re chasing you, they say stuff like, ‘Good stuff!’ and ‘Need that!’ It’s bizarre.”

Ya think? “Sounds like they’re referring to us as food.”

“Not always.”

The three of us turned to the right, as someone else joined us. He looked like he was in his thirties, not very tall, but totally buff. His head was shaved, and he had a snaggly beard and mustache. “Sometimes they seem to be talking about things they’ve found.”

“Zara, this is one of our friends.” Chet gave the guy a smile. “Uh, this is the girl who first saw one of the Talkers.”

Aw. They’d given them a name. Definitely a former basement-dweller, this Chet character. Sheesh.

“Yeah, you made quite an impression on the Chetster here,” said New Guy.

“The Ch…okay. And you are?”

“Sorry. Hi. I’m Stalker.”

Sounded like I wasn’t the only one making up names. “Stalker. Should I be alarmed?”

He laughed. “Nah. It’s a new world, sweetheart. Words can mean something different now. In my case, it refers to someone who hunts the Z.”

Did I mention that I can’t stand cutesy abbreviations for things? Or being called “sweetheart” by strangers? No? So I’m mentioning it now. Acronyms set my teeth on edge, too. Maybe I have a condition. Whatever. I could do self-therapy and start an Apocalypse Dictionary to help me cope with the sudden urge to strangle everyone who used words like “the Z,” and “Talkers.” Or I could just grow up and get over it.

“Where are the rest of your friends?” I figured I should change the subject as a way to institute my new attitude.

“Back at the house.” Stalker…sorry, but that stupid name will never sound okay…lifted a bag he was holding. “Got a few things we need. We really should head back. Wanna come with us?”

“No, but thanks.” I removed the cardigan from its hanger and draped it over my arm. I still have some shopping to do.”

Stalker burst out laughing, further alarming my sense of personal safety. “That’s sweet! Ha! Shopping! How old are you, hon?”

“I’ll tell you if you promise not to use any more condescending names.”

He looked confused for a second. “I – oh! Hey, it’s just how I talk, but sure. No problem…Zara.”

“I’m seventeen.”

He nodded. “I bet you clean up real good.”

I bet you let your butt crack show when you crouch down to strip dead bodies. “I suspect we all do. Well, gotta go. Nice meeting you, Francine. Er, Stalker.” I cleared my throat in what was intended as a meaningful way, and went off to the other side of the store.

Distraction during a zombie apocalypse can be fatal. One of the things I’d disciplined myself to do was be on my guard at all times. Vigilance, being aware of everything around you, these were the tools that kept one from getting chomped on.

I only mention this because as I wandered away from Chet and Co., I was thinking about what they’d said regarding the new and improved version of our old enemy. In other words, I was distracted.

“Need good!”

Oh, crap. I stopped and whirled around. Yup. Zombie in a – oh, good god on a surf board – a bikini?! You know, if the thing had once been a woman, I might have accepted what I was seeing, but this was, it had been, I – there are no words. Even as a live human, a man shouldn’t try to get himself into a bikini under the best of circumstances. The top part wasn’t so bad, was in fact a little funny, but the skimpy bottom part? Oh, gross to the tenth power!

“Need different!” I said before realizing I was actually answering this thing.

The zombie did something with its mouth that on a live person could have passed for a smirk and looked down at itself. “Bad?”

Was I for real having a conversation about fashion with a freaking zombie? I swallowed and nodded. “Bad. Need suit.”

Talking Zombie groaned. “Bad hot.”

“Then maybe a pair of shorts. Guy shorts.” Hey, we were in a clothing store, after all.

“Guy good?”

So far I’d been able to follow the rudimentary form of speech, but this one had me flummoxed. Was he asking if it was good to be a guy? Or maybe if guy clothes were good. Who knew? “Guy you. Guy shorts good. Good you.” There. That seemed to cover everything. And believe me, there was a lot that needed covering.

“Stay. Guy shorts now. You food then.”

I blinked. The doggone thing was telling me to wait while it changed into something more appropriate, so when it got back it could use me for its meal. Huh. And here I thought I’d had a positive breakthrough. “Go. Shorts.”

“Stay?”

I shrugged. I didn’t want to lie, although I couldn’t have told you why I thought that mattered.

“Good.”

Guess it worked. Talking Zombie stumbled off in search of man shorts, and I sneaked away as fast as my new boots would let me without making a lot of noise. As I went, I realized Chet and his entourage had long since left the store; it occurred to me that they would have found my conversation with, as they put it, “the Z,” an educational experience. Maybe.

By the time I got back to my attic, the realization of what had happened finally sank in and I began to shake. I ate a Twinkie (they weren’t joking about the shelf life of those things) and had some water, and soon began to calm down. As I drifted off to sleep later, I admitted that things were indeed changing, but was far from sure if these changes would be for the better – or the worse.

Impressum

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 14.01.2016

Alle Rechte vorbehalten

Widmung:
NOTICE OF COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT The contents of this book is protected by United States Copyright laws and may not, in whole or in part, be reproduced by anyone other than the author. Further, no portion of this work, nor the book in its entirety, may be offered by any third party(ies) in any form, either electronic (such as a PDF document or an ebook) or physical (such as a paperback or included in a hard-copy publication) without the express, written permission by, or contractual agreement with, the author. Its availability on BookRix is an example of the latter availability and may be read, in situ, but not downloaded by any foreign entities nor copied by same.