This whole thing became real for me the day my nephew died. Before that it seemed so distant, like it couldn't be happening. The world couldn't possibly be falling apart like this. But when we got a call from my sister and she told us that her little boy was dead, we couldn't console her, we couldn't comfort her...there was nothing we could do. We could only listen to her hopeless sobs and add some of our own. I remember my mom asking when the funeral would be, not realizing there wouldn't be one. Such courtesies were gone in the face of this apocalypse. The world as we knew it was destroyed: destroyed by a plague of sorts that was transforming human beings into thoughtless undead, fixed on consuming the flesh of the living. The newscasters called it a 'zombie apocalypse'. The name stuck.
My nephew had been in school. He was a first grader. He was always excited about show and tell and his shiny folders and No. 2 pencils. I've played it through my head a million times. He was probably just sitting there in class when mass panic spread: fire alarms blaring, teachers trying not to panic, and all the children being evacuated to a church near the school building. A kid in the school had turned into a zombie and they decided to follow their bomb threat protocol to try to keep the children safe. Hindsight suggests it was a bad call. The most terrifying thing about the infection is that someone carries it for somewhere around two to three days before they turn, and then they change in almost an instant: like a switch is flipped in their brain. Some of the kids turned while they were in the church. I have a few theories about why one person turning seems to set off a chain reaction in others who are infected, but I'm no scientist. They're just suppositions, I don't really know anything. What I do know is that too few people made it out of that building. My cousin wasn't one of them. I'm unable to convince myself that it ended in any way other than him getting eaten. I wish I could lie to myself and believe he'd met some other end, but I can't believe. He would have been dead or undead soon after because so many people were exposed, but that's of very little consolation.
Well, either he got eaten or he got burned alive. They torched the church after they blockaded the doors to keep the zombies in. I was told they could hear students begging for help even after the building was ablaze. Necessity justified the inhumanity of their actions, but that does nothing to quiet my anger. What happened will never sit well with me, even in the face of the greatest crisis humanity has ever witnessed.
The plague, this 'zombie apocalypse', began in the late spring, right as college was letting out and summer was beginning. I had actually just finished up my finals when news reports came in of strange behavior in some town in Kansas. They claimed people were going nuts and eating one another. I didn't believe it at first. I couldn't believe it. A lot of people on the television didn't believe it either. Then the Center for Disease Control declared it an epidemic a few days after the report. Samuel, my nephew, was already dead by that point. The town where my sister lived had its first outbreak on Day 3. By the time the outbreak was declared an epidemic, it was a ghost town. My sister was dead, her husband was dead...everyone was dead. Within the first week, they called it a pandemic. By that point, everyone had lost someone dear to them, but within the first month, everyone who survived had lost everything.
The disease itself is flawless: it shows no symptoms for at least thirty six hours, can be transmitted through a sneeze, a handshake, or saliva left on a chewed-up pencil. It's the perfect storm of bacteria or viruses or whatever it is. It might be a parasite for all I know. People tried to run away from it, but so many of them had already caught it and they just spread it faster. These selfish bastards killed us all. Maybe if people had stayed in their towns, there would be billions of people left instead of hundreds. Someone said that about one in a thousand people were immune to the infection. I live in a town of three thousand, but I'm the only one left. Statistically, there are two others who could have survived, but realistically, they got eaten. I survived because I'm immune. And because I'm a nerd.
When it all became real, I didn't freak out, and I didn't run. I acted on my 'zombie apocalypse plan'. Yeah, I had one of those. I've always assumed that every nerdy guy does. We watch zombie flicks, look past the outlandishness of it all and cast judgment on the characters. We would do better. When the movie is over, we ask ourselves, “What would I do in the situation?” We might meditate on it for hours if left to our own devices. We then develop some sort of plan for if a zombie apocalypse were to occur. It's pure fiction. Our creativity is wasted in the planning for such an event. But then it happened.
So I acted on my zombie apocalypse plan. I found a blacksmith who could make me some swords. They were simple, but their design was with purpose. One was light and quick, the other heavier and more brutal. One would parry and slice while the other cracked bone and severed limbs. I had him make me several backups of each weapon. If one were to break for some reason, I would be in deep shit without spares.
As order dissolved into chaos, I started wearing a gas mask and carrying my swords strapped across my back. People looked at me strange—those who hadn't barricaded themselves in their homes—but I was prepared when the epidemic swept through our town.
A lot of people were terrified to the point of stupidity when the town started turning into the walking dead. I just got angry. I was angry with the bastard that had brought the infection in. I was angry with the people that acted so helpless and weak. I was angry that I couldn't save them. I tried. I tried so hard to save them. I took it upon myself to patrol the streets, striking down whatever zombies I found, but everyone had isolated themselves in their homes. I couldn't save them. Even when I did manage to rescue someone, when I managed to stop the zombies that were trying to eat them, they were already dead: they just didn't know it yet. They'd gotten infected somehow and I couldn't do a thing about it. I couldn't protect any of them. I was useless.
I came home one day from patrolling the streets for zombies and found my mom lying on the floor. That moment is permanently etched in my mind. I will always remember the grotesque expression that was frozen on her face and the way her body lay twisted and ruined. I will spare you the rest because I would not wish my memories of that day upon anyone. I just want it to be known that much of my sanity was stripped away that day: the day when I found my mother torn apart on the floor of my living room. The day I hunted down the senseless undead creature that had done it to here. The day I slaughtered my own father.
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