Only Dead on the Inside

by James Breakwell

  CURRENCY CONVERSION

  As currency of the new barter-based economy, diapers aren’t perfect. For starters, they’re great for changing babies, but they’re bad for making change. If you buy something that’s worth one and a half diapers, that half a diaper won’t do anyone any good. You can’t make a baby take half a bowel movement. And to be clear, I didn’t mean that as a challenge. Please don’t send me any pictures.

  There are other goods survivors might use as a currency, but they won’t work as well. The most likely candidate is toilet paper. The drawback there is while everyone needs it, it’s easily replaceable. Serviceable substitutes include leaves, old newspapers, and pages from books. When the world ends, libraries will enjoy a sudden surge in popularity. Even dollar bills can make good toilet paper, which is ironic since toilet paper makes such poor money. Grab toilet paper when you can, but don’t expect it to be effective on the barter scene. When it comes to professional transactions, use diapers if you want to be taken seriously.

  ARMED AND UNHARMED

  Some items in the zombie apocalypse won’t be for sale, no matter how many diapers you have. No one will sell you a gun if you could use it to rob them and get your Pampers back. If you want tools of destruction, you’ll have to loot them, but that approach is perilous at best. If you need to steal a weapon from someone, by definition that means they’re armed and you aren’t. That should end well. The only way your robbery will succeed is if you already have a better weapon than they do, which begs the question of why you bothered to steal from them in the first place. A weapon might be unguarded if its owner is already dead, but if that’s the case you should leave it alone. It obviously didn’t do the last guy any good.

  Stay away from gun stores if you can help it. If the owner is alive, he’ll shoot you, and if he’s dead, his merchandise obviously sucks. Even if you know of an unguarded source of guns, it’s still best not to loot them. Every time you fire a gun to kill one zombie, the noise will attract more. You’ll have to shoot those, too, which will draw in even more of the undead. Your bullet supply will dwindle as the zombie horde grows larger and larger. Or you could skip using a gun altogether and go home and take a nap. It’s your call.

  If you really want to keep your family alive, loot bladed weapons instead. You don’t have to reload a knife, unless it’s some kind of weird hybrid knife-gun or gun-knife. One is a knife that shoots bullets, and the other is a gun that shoots knives. I might be making that up. Even I can’t tell anymore. The only thing I know for sure is if everyone had one, the zombie apocalypse never would’ve happened. Knife-gun control laws doomed us all.

  Most other slicing tools won’t be that elaborate, but it’s better that way. People are less likely to guard knives than guns because cutting utensils are common and cheap, like your mom. I apologize to any mothers I offended. Please don’t stab me. In reality, it’s almost impossible to avoid bladed weapon attacks. Knives are everywhere. Easy places to find them include retail stores, people’s houses, and your own back. Unfortunately, metaphorical knives have little value for killing zombies.

  Knives are handy because they were made to cut stuff. The same can’t be said for swords. Most of the ones in stores are cheap knockoffs that’ll break if you try to slice anything more deadly than fruit. By all means grab that cool-looking katana to hang up in your room, but only use it if you’re attacked by a horde of angry cantaloupes.

  I COME BEARING GIFTS

  The zombie apocalypse is the perfect time to become the parent you always pretended to be on the internet. Kids naturally want every single toy they see on a commercial. Previously, you never would’ve bought that stuff because you’re a responsible adult with limited means. But once the world ends, anything goes. Other parents will be distracted looting survival necessities. Since you’ll buy that stuff with diapers later, you won’t have any competition when you snatch everything in the toy aisle. Material goods won’t make your family happy, but neither will poverty. Grab everything you can and take your chances.

  Once the world ends, there won’t be a budget limit for turning your wish list into a reality. Impress your children by breaking into a jewelry display case and taking everything shiny. It should all still be there. No one will care about jewelry once the food shortages start. You can’t eat gold, no matter how much hot sauce you use. Never accept jewelry in a trade, but feel free to loot it if you walk by a store. It’s light, and kids like anything that sparkles. Your daughter will think you’re the best parent ever when you casually toss her a sack with 1,000 carats of diamonds. Just make sure she doesn’t drop them anyplace a baby might choke on them.

  ALMOST FOOD

  A healthy diaper stockpile will help you trade for food, but it won’t be enough on its own. You can’t rely entirely on trading to get what you need because eventually everyone else might run out of rations, too. At that point, you’ll have to fall back on your own meager vegetable garden and whatever nonedible household items your kids are desperate enough to eat. Hide the decorative bath soaps.

  If you must forage for your own food, skip the stores and head to the nearest fast food burger joint. You’ll have the whole place to yourself. Rational people will assume the food there went bad without refrigeration. That’s where they’re wrong. Highly scientific studies conducted by random people posting pictures of their food on the internet show certain fast food burgers never, ever spoil. Some images show “beef” patties remaining unchanged for entire presidential administrations. Those sandwiches could outlast humanity itself. Cows will have the last laugh after all.

  Nobody knows what’s actually in these burgers, but just one has more calories than an entire steer. A single meal straight off the menu should feed your whole family for a week. Kids love fast food, so getting them to eat it won’t be a problem. And yes, those burgers will slowly kill you, but that beats dying quickly from starvation. The best part is you don’t need to do anything special to store them. Just cook them all on the first day and stack them in a cabinet like hockey pucks. Then enjoy eating one or two a day until a zombie eats you or your heart explodes, whichever comes first.

  If you’re not in the mood for burgers, loot other houses in the neighborhood. Everyone has some canned goods in the back of their cabinets that are virtually inedible even when brand new. These are what are known as “donor cans.” Nobody remembers who bought them or why, but the only reason they’ll ever leave that cabinet is if someone comes by asking for contributions for a food drive. Poor people probably like jalapeño tuna or concentrated sweet potato extract canned sometime in the early eighties. And if they don’t, that’s extra motivation for them to find a job.

  At the start of the apocalypse, hit up the houses of your friends and neighbors and grab the donor cans as fast as possible. Your kids won’t like the food inside, and neither will you. But nobody will shoot you when you loot it. They’ll probably thank you for finally getting it out of their houses. Procuring these items won’t be a problem, but actually eating them might be. You have to decide if you’d rather die by zombie bites or food poisoning. The zombie apocalypse is full of choices.

  YESTERDAY’S FASHIONS, TODAY’S PRICES

  Walking around naked in the zombie apocalypse is a bad idea. Yes, societal norms will fail along with society itself, but that doesn’t mean you have to make the situation worse. People will see enough horrible things without having to catch a glimpse of your underwhelming genitalia. Besides, it’ll be cold when the power cuts out. If you’re a guy, you’ll definitely want clothes to hide the shrinkage.

  When looting clothes, stay away from the mall and head directly to secondhand stores. Absolutely no one will compete with you. Seriously, free isn’t that much of a discount from their normal prices. Since no humans will be there, the place should be zombie-free. Grab sizes for your kids for every age between now and adulthood. Fill your vehicle with armloads of embarrassing, almost-wearable clothing. You don’t want to make another trip. Anything you don�
�t like you can burn for warmth or, depending on how tough times are, eat. Stay away from polyester. It’s hard on the digestive tract.

  THE TAKEAWAY

  Looting will keep you alive and will genuinely be a lot of fun. Your kids will get a kick out of spending time with you and breaking every rule you taught them over the course of their lives. However, the thrill of this vigilantism will diminish over time, not because the fun of destruction is shallow and temporary, but because all the good stuff will be gone. Always look in places other people aren’t interested in. One man’s trash is another man’s family dinner for four.

  CHAPTER 5

  GOING THE DISTANCE

  When dealing with any crisis, you have three options:

  1. Run.

  2. Hide.

  3. Fight.

  Those are the steps law enforcement agencies teach for dealing with active shooters, but they also apply for shepherding children through the zombie apocalypse. Two-thirds of those options are ways of defusing a situation by sidestepping conflict. The best way to solve any situation is to avoid it forever. That’s the lesson I learned from my marriage. I loaded the dishwasher wrong one time two years ago. My wife still can’t find me.

  As a parent, the “run” option is most important to master. It’s the one you’ll use the most often and also requires the least amount of thought. It’s so easy it’s a problem. If you ever notice your feet moving when you didn’t tell them to, it means your body took over because your brain was too slow and stupid to figure out what to do. Nobody knows you better than you. If you were young and single, fleeing by yourself in blind terror would be fine, but you have kids. Don’t leave them behind to be eaten alive. They take it personally.

  If you and your family are going to survive the zombie apocalypse, you’ll have to learn to flee together. Running away the right way is a mix of art and science with a dash of total panic sprinkled in. This approach won’t resolve any of your problems. But it will keep you a step ahead of them for one more day.

  ON THE RUN

  Running is the natural choice for anyone, but especially parents. Your survival instincts tell you to dodge confrontation now and deal with the fallout later. It’s the same reason you tell your kids “maybe” when you mean “no.” By avoiding danger, you live to fight another day. Actually, that defeats the purpose. You live to run away another day. There’s no shame in that. Zombies can’t bite what they can’t catch, except in the nightmare scenario where they have dentures and learn to throw them. Let’s not give them any ideas.

  For the purposes of this guide, the term “running” covers all methods of moving away from zombies. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a sprint. It could mean tiptoeing, crawling, or even dancing. Just make sure you don’t pick anything louder than a foxtrot. Tap dancing will get you killed.

  PACE SETTER

  The best way to run from zombies is not to run at all. A brisk walk is usually fast enough. For reference, imagine the speed you’d need to outpace your elderly grandmother. I don’t know why you’d ever want to do that, but picture it anyway. Maybe there’s only one piece of hard candy left and you never learned to share. As long as you move at a steady rate, you should be able to stay ahead of her. Just don’t stand still for too long or she’ll punch you in the gut and steal your candy. If a woman in her eighties wants something badly enough to race for it, she’ll definitely resort to violence. It’s a good thing this isn’t the old people apocalypse. There’d be no survivors.

  Kids can comfortably maintain a brisk walk, but anything faster than that and your family might get separated. As every horror movie ever made demonstrates, splitting up cuts your odds of survival to zero. Inevitably, a zombie will grab one kid, and the rest of the family will attempt to save them. It’s not a rational decision, but parents have a sentimental attachment to their children. The few seconds you saved by speeding up will be more than negated by your entire family getting massacred. It’s hard to get anywhere on time when you’re dead.

  Running from zombies is more about situational awareness and pathfinding than speed. The undead don’t have to be fast to catch your family. They’re a threat because they outnumber you and never give up. It’s the same reason your kids usually get what they want. If zombies slowly close in on you from all sides without ever stopping to take a break, it’s likely one of them will snag you. But as long as you keep your family moving and watch out for spots where you might get cornered, you should live long enough to die from something non–zombie related. Old age is a pipe dream, but there are other good ways to go. I’m still hoping to fatally overdose on cotton candy.

  SPEED DEMON

  Even when you’re by yourself, actually running is a bad idea. You’ll put increased distance between yourself and an individual zombie, but you’ll eventually have to stop. When you do, there will be zombies at your new location, too. They’ll be everywhere. It’s the zombie apocalypse, not the zombie occasional sighting. By exhausting yourself, you’ll do the zombies a massive favor by making yourself easier to catch. Don’t expect any gratitude, though. They’ll tear you apart without so much as a thank-you card.

  There will be times, however, when a leisurely stroll won’t do. Perhaps a wall of zombies is closing in on you and a quick dash is the only way to escape. Or maybe your spouse has a headache and a quick trip to loot some over-the-counter medicine is the only way you’ll get laid. Whatever the reason, if you must run, keep these dos and don’ts in mind:

  Do wear the right footwear. It’s hard to outrun anything in high heels. Plus if you come back as a zombie, you’ll be doomed to an eternity of calluses.

  Don’t stretch. You should only run in an emergency. If you have time to stretch, you have time to slack off and walk.

  Do watch where you’re going. It doesn’t do any good to dodge one zombie if you run directly into another. That would be embarrassing and also fatal.

  Don’t forget to look down. You don’t want to step on a prone zombie and die—or, even worse, end up tracking zombie splatter into your house.

  Do stiff-arm zombies liberally. They are poorly balanced and will fall over easily.

  Don’t make fake crowd noises while you do it. Pretend you’re winning the Heisman Trophy if you must. Just keep the sound effects to a minimum.

  Don’t be discouraged if your oldest kids are faster than you and leave you in the dust. It’s better to have living children than sappy, attached ones.

  Do quit as soon as you can. There isn’t a prize for going farther. Nobody is impressed by that “26.2” sticker on the back of your minivan.

  Most children who are old enough to walk are fast enough to dodge a zombie. However, a young kid’s top speed is irrelevant because they don’t have the attention span to keep it up. Little kids will stop to look at a cool rock. Or to backtrack to see another rock that might have been even cooler. Or to complain you didn’t give them enough time to compare the two. Small children either need to be herded or carried. For that reason, I recommend at least one adult per every two children. At the very least, you have two hands, so you can grab both kids and drag them along while they throw temper tantrums. It’ll be just like when you took them to the grocery store in the pre-apocalypse world, only you’ll die of zombie bites instead of public humiliation.

  When moving multiple young children, keep them in a group. You can’t protect them if they’re scattered. And inevitably, they’ll do everything in their power to go in different directions. It’s like herding cats, only kids talk back and have sharper claws. Trimming their nails won’t get any easier when the world ends.

  There are a few proven parenting methods to keep kids together, but they’re not for everyone. Only use these tricks if you want your children to live.

  Ways to Keep Track of Children When on the Move

  Method

  Pro

  Con

  Holding Hands in a Long Chain

  You can break apart at a moment’s notice if necessary.
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  Kids will fight constantly and attract every zombie on the planet.

  Tying Everyone Together with Mountaineering Rope

  There’s no way to get lost.

  Turns your family into interconnected sausage links.

  Child Leashes

  Children will always be within a few feet of you.

  Demeaning to everyone involved.

  Buddy System

  You gain more accountability by pairing children to watch each other.

  A great way to lose two kids at once.

  Sheepdog

  Good enough to herd livestock, good enough to herd your kids.

  Only helpful after your kids fall down a well.

  Hypnosis

  Puts your kids in a trance so they follow all commands to stay close.