I had just entered my fourth apartment of the day. There were no signs of the dead there, and its residents had left a few items of interest behind in their kitchen cabinets. I was rejoicing in the discovery of two boxes of stale macaroni that were infested with weevils. In my previous life, I would have dropped them into the trash in disgust. Now I was just grateful for the added protein.
There was a window in the kitchen. From it, I saw a flicker of motion out of the corner of my eye.
Plastering my back to the wall to make sure that I would not be seen, I peered out of the window. A man—a living man—was putting something on a telephone pole across the street. And then he was gone.
Quickly tossing the boxes of macaroni and some bars of soap that I had found in the apartment into my backpack, I left the residence and headed out to the point across the street where the man had been.
By the time I reached the spot where he had been, there was no sign of him. However, what he had placed on the telephone pole turned out to be a flyer.
“Survivors of the Apocalypse—you are not alone. The living unite—next meeting will be held in the Carrollton library on May 12th at noon. Refreshments will be served.”
The group recruits by posting messages around the city—in case others are out there—listing the time of the next meeting. Their success has been quite limited. This is probably because there are so few living remaining to find their posts and those who do survive probably are still alive because they avoid going out as much as possible. At any rate, only a few recruits have been obtained through this method of advertising, but the group is still dedicated to trying to find more living to add to its ranks. They place make-shift flyers on phone poles, the sides of buildings, adhered to windows, plastered across surviving street signs, any available space.
I really wasn’t sure if I should, but curiosity got the best of me, so I went.
That first meeting that I attended consisted of me and five other people. Initially, when I first arrived, I discovered that I felt quite awkward around strangers. Although this had never been the case for me in the past, this was my first social encounter since the zombie outbreak, and I had no idea what were appropriate social mores anymore. I was nervous, uncomfortable, and strongly regretting that I had come. Viewing myself from the perspective of an outsider for the first time since the world had changed, I was suddenly overcome with an overwhelming sense of shame over how I had been conducting my life. I didn’t dare admit to anyone that I shared my home with Mother in her necrotic condition or that I had eaten human meat out of desperation on a couple of occasions.
Fortunately, nobody put me on the spot. Everyone mingled, got a cup of instant coffee, and then we pulled our chairs into a loose circle and people shared voluntarily. I quickly realized as I listened to other members speaking frankly about their raw, emotional, and ugly experiences, that the way I was conducting my life wasn’t far from the norm. Or maybe, more accurately, there were no norms anymore. My actions didn’t fall into the category of taboo though, and that was a huge relief.
I did little more than introduce myself at that first meeting, but everyone seemed satisfied with just my presence. Then we ate some stale Little Debbies snack cakes (rare and highly prized spoils that would fetch a hefty price in trade on the black market), savored the comfort and safety we felt together, and then looted some books before we departed.
One meeting and I was hooked.
For the first two meetings I attended, I walked to our designated meeting place. However, now I just drive a Hummer. I acquired it a little over a year ago. Gasoline is extremely scarce and the hum of an engine generally attracts the attention of any zombies in the vicinity, so I use it very sparingly. However, it has become my preferred means of transportation for our monthly meetings, especially if the weather is looking iffy. Being caught out on foot in the midst of a storm is not desirable—especially because inclement weather reduces visibility and drowns out the sound of approaching mobs.
Survivors of the Apocalypse definitely has advantages. And, as nice as companionship and even a fleeting sense of safety are, those aren’t the only functions it serves. In a world stripped of the Internet, apps, cell phones, television, and even newspapers, I must admit, I had been starving for information. Although limited, I am extremely grateful for the knowledge that membership in the group has provided.
For instance, I’ve learned that a fair number of people keep zombies like I do, generally because it’s just too hard to let go. People tenderly hold on to their parents, their spouses, their children. I think keeping children must be especially hard. For instance, Maggie, a petite, sweet-looking older lady in our group who looks as though she probably went to church every Sunday of her life, keeps her former grandchild locked in its “playroom.” I try not to picture the life she goes home to after our meetings.
Although nobody in Survivors has admitted to doing it themselves, a couple of fairly reliable sources have recounted tales of other men keeping zombies for less sentimental, more unseemly, reasons. Apparently they knock out their teeth and use them as sex slaves—even trick them out for supplies. I personally can’t understand that. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to get off in a rancid, putrefying orifice. One’s own hand is lot warmer, not to mention more hygienic.
As for cannibalism, it seemed that survivors had independently all pretty much come to the same conclusion. It was a necessary evil. The critical shortage of meat began almost immediately after zombies began to appear. Within a few weeks, all supermarket meat had either been looted or had spoiled in its cases. Canned meat and other protein dense foods like legumes were quickly scavenged. In all but the most rural of areas in the United States, there was almost a complete lack of livestock , so the living were rapidly growing alarmed by their limited diets. Meals consisting entirely of dry cereal, potato chips, or even breath mints rapidly became the norm, and such nutrient poor eating habits led to weakness, slowed reflexes, and increased likelihood of being overcome by the dead. So cannibalism had soon become an accepted practice.
And, as we all quickly learned, eating a zombie doesn’t turn you into one. Eating the flesh of the recently deceased, whether they have reanimated as zombies or not, doesn’t cause the infection. The most serious concern associated with consuming human corpses is merely the levels of bacteria that may be present. The fresher the meat, the better. If you eat something that has had too much time to decay, the resulting stomach cramps can be sheer agony.
Chapter 3
Perfect Storm
THIS MONTH, WHEN I ARRIVED, I discovered that a new member had joined the group—a woman named Tempest.
“Is that her name or her tag?” I wondered to myself.
Post-apocalypse, many people reinvented themselves, adopting new names akin to gamer tags to accompany their new identities. Since the End of Days, people were no longer the same people they had been. Husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, lawyers, accountants, gas station attendants—these labels lost pertinence and were rarely retained. What people had been in their previous lives was irrelevant and painful to remember. Many survivors shed their pasts completely, including the birth names associated with them.
Tempest was hot as hell. She was all long, wild and disheveled blonde hair and green eyes adorned with smudged black eyeliner. She was also obviously damaged goods though, even by post-apocalyptic standards. The exterior she presented was as tough as nails, and if there was a soft interior lurking anywhere beneath her surface, it appeared likely to remain safe behind her impenetrable diamond-hard exterior for the indefinite future. If she had a soft and gentle side, an ounce of vulnerability, it was anybody’s guess as to what might be an effective means of accessing it. She was undeniably sexy in her torn jeans, clingy tank top, and black leather jacket—cool, aloof, and impermeable.
I tried not to notice, but I really could not help but watch her as she strode around the room introducing herself to other members of the group. I was eage
r to learn her story.
Besides Tempest, all the standard people were in attendance: Maggie, Dave, Gabe, Ron, and Tex.
Maggie is a rather doddering woman in her fifties who always arrived clothed in house dresses and sensible shoes. Not that I am casting aspersions regarding Maggie’s fashion sense. There isn’t a lot of incentive for dressing up under our current circumstances; I can’t imagine that she has much of anyone to impress. Besides, donning glamorous attire that limits maneuverability, such as evening gowns and stiletto heels, would be not only socially inappropriate, but an outright detriment to survival. Still, as terrible as I feel about making the association, I can’t help thinking of Monty Python’s pepper pot ladies every time I see her.
Dave is the historian of the group. God only knows what he did before the apocalypse, but he is the keeper and compiler of knowledge now. He is probably only in his late forties, but his appearance is slipshod and ramshackle, with a wide, nasty scar that runs like a fissure through the right side of his face. Although Dave is missing an eye, he unfortunately only sometimes seems to remember to wear a patch over it. The patch does nothing to improve his condition, of course, but is entirely for the benefit of those around him.
Gabe is a younger man, in his early thirties at most, with a large, muscular physique. He joined only a few months ago and is still warming up to the group. He has made allusions to losing someone close to him—I think he may have said it was his wife—but he hasn’t opened up and told his full story yet. The group doesn’t push. We’re happy to have our members even if they choose to permanently remain quiet.
And then there’s Ron and Tex. Ron is small and wiry, in his early fifties, and always seems to be wearing a grimy baseball cap. Tex is his dog. Ron consistently comes to the meetings accompanied by Tex.
Tex’s features are so mangled that it was impossible to tell what breed of dog he is. He is missing an eye and half an ear, and his body is crisscrossed with scar tissue. The dog’s fur apparently won’t grow over scars, so the poor animal’s coat is so sparse that it looks like Tex has mange.
Tex has saved Ron’s life more times than Ron can count.
Dogs are highly sought after companions these days. In fact, I’ve heard that they trade for massive amounts of supplies on the black market. And it’s no wonder. Dogs have proven to be immune to zombie infection. And, because of their keen senses of smell, they hate zombies to begin with—they recognize when something is dead, and they know that dead things should not get up and walk around. A dog is going to distrust anything ambulatory that smells like that. Now toss in a canine’s protective nature, and any hostile action a zombie might begin to take toward a dog’s master is going to immediately have that dog worked into a zombie-loathing attack frenzy.
Unless specifically trained, a dog will not know that it should take out the head, but any dog still can certainly slow a zombie down a hell of a lot.
I have heard Ron tell the tale of his first zombie encounter at almost every one of our meetings.
A few days after the “infection” was first reported, back when there was still television programming to report things, Ron was attacked by a zombie for the first time.
Ron was entering his fifties, divorced, owned a modest home, and loved his dog. Like most people, he had been following the reports of the strange infection with some concern, but he was still going about his daily life. He got up and went to work at the auto shop, stopped for beer and cigarettes, then came home and fixed himself something simple for supper. Ron had run into a couple of people who said they had seen someone infected, but he hadn’t come face to face with one himself.
Then one morning, Ron was getting ready to leave for work when Tex started making a huge commotion, barking, growling, and scratching at the front door.
Ron couldn’t shut him up, so he let him out. He reasoned that maybe the poor dog had diarrhea.
Leaving the house to go to work, Ron exited the house, locked the front door, and began speaking to Tex without even looking around.
“Tex, you’re going to have to stay out while I’m at work, you crazy dog. I can’t have you shitting all over the house. Tex?”
Turning around, Ron saw that Tex was poised to attack a man who was approaching the house.
“Tex! No! Come here!” Ron had shouted frantically, trying to keep his dog from doing something horrible that would get him taken away and put down.
Oddly, the man was ignoring the menacing dog that was glaring at him and growling ferociously through its bared teeth.
More oddly still, the man looked like he’d already been attacked by something. He had an unhealthy greenish pallor and several visible wounds that looked infected...
“Infected...” That word seemed to bounce around inside Ron’s brain for a moment, and then he said “oh, shit” under his breath.
At that moment, as the man continued to amble toward Ron who was standing at the front door, Tex sprung.
As Ron had proudly recounted to every living person he had encountered since, “Tex grabbed that zombie’s leg, gnashing and tearing, and had pulled him back, away from me by several yards, before I even realized what was happening. Then he managed to bite through a tendon or something. He rendered that poor fucker’s leg pretty much useless, and that zombie went down like a sack of bricks.”
At that point, the zombie, now crawling toward Ron while being bitten in the ass by a large, angry dog, was substantially less of a threat than it had been a few short moments before when it was still able to walk erect and was not yet encumbered by an enraged canine.
Ron had turned around and unlocked the door, got his shotgun, and dispatched his would-be assailant. Then he and Tex went back in the house. Ron called in sick to work that morning. The next morning, out of courtesy, he tried to call in again, but nobody ever answered there again.
Our meetings traditionally begin with a moment of silence in honor of the former members of our little club who are no longer with us. We don’t know what has happened to any of them for sure, but in general terms, we can pretty much guess.
We all bowed our heads. Afterwards, as is customary, Dave opened the meeting with a general welcome and cursory overview of the agenda. The floor was then opened up to give each person a chance to speak.
It took a little while, but by my third meeting, I was comfortable enough to open up and was ready to start to unburden myself. Since then, I’ve recounted my tale whenever the group acquires a new member, which admittedly doesn’t happen all that often. Today was the third time I have told my story.
I’ve promised myself that I’ll be thorough here. To be honest, whether this account is exhaustive or even accurate is largely inconsequential; it’s only real importance is to me, but if I can’t maintain my own internal code, what is left? My experiences during that time were not particularly unusual or uncommon, but they are mine, so I will share here at least a rudimentary summary of how I first came to discover that hell had come to earth.
I was driving on the highway in my Honda Accord when I first became aware of the dawn of Zombie Era. Traffic seemed to be piling up ahead; I was heading toward some sort of slow down.
As I slowed to a crawl behind the cars in front of me, I saw that, perhaps a dozen car lengths ahead of me, there were several cars stopped at askew angles. At first I thought it was a regular accident.
But there was an awful lot of commotion... People were out on the road, and it looked like there must be injuries. I slowed to a stop some distance from the pile up because I suspected I might need to try to turn around, drive on the shoulder, or perform some other not-strictly-legal vehicular maneuver to get around the mess. You can imagine my dismay as I realized that two of the motorists ahead of me had exited their cars, walked over to a third motorist, and began eating his face. What should I do? Try to stop these lunatics? While still debating, more ravenous motorists with a myriad of alarming injuries began to display similar behavior. A few cars had already pulled to a stop be
hind me. I made a spur of the moment decision, peeled out, performed a three-point turn, and got the hell out of dodge. Turning on the radio, I soon learned that what I had witnessed was not an isolated incident. I won’t go into details, but I performed some damned unusual driving that day as I raced home to safely wall up myself and Mother.
After I finished sharing my story, Dave took the floor. As soon as he had begun to speak, I stole a glance at Tempest. She had taken off her jacket, and she was even more shapely than I had previously thought. I also caught a glimpse of a tattoo on her upper arm, but I couldn’t quite make out what it was.
After I had taken her in for as long as I could comfortably get away with, I reluctantly turned my attention to Dave.
Dave is the historian of our group. Once you get past his frightening appearance, particularly that deep, wide scar that runs like a jagged river straight through the right side of his face with the empty eye socket sitting in its middle, you realize he’s probably the most affable of any of us. And the knowledge he shares with the group is invaluable.
Of course, there is some knowledge that is popularly known. In the early days, there were still infrequent transmissions available on television and radio to which we all stayed glued. After those disappeared, there were still the occasional voices of individuals through YouTube or by podcast.
By these means, we learned that the infection had began in the U.S, and it was initially believed that Europe was a safe haven. However, after the first American refugee ships left, reports began to trickle in that Europe was as overrun as North America. I sometimes wonder how those voyages fared. Those boats to Europe were organized by the make-shift militias that popped up after the end became nigh, so they were more filled with arms than people. Maybe they were actually able to survive. Of course, there has been no word.
Making the Best of the Zombie Apocalypse Page 2