How the Other Half Dies

[This is a tiny little something I wrote after a conversation with Evelyn LaFont about the problem with most zombie plans. You can read her rather interesting take on the conversation and how it applies to publishing here.

Also, this story involves zombies. For those of you who don’t like that kind of thing (you know who you are) be forewarned.]

You didn’t survive.

Of course you didn’t, you poor sad sap.

You sat on the couch playing Xbox and drinking Mountain Dew for eight hours a day. You thought you were tough because your twitching fingers commanded the muscle-bound space marines with impossibly large guns.

You didn’t survive.

You made plans for this. You talked with your friends about where you would go, what weapons you would get, how you would avoid the hoards of the undead. And when you had had your fun you went back home to mommy’s house.

You watched all the movies and you cheered for the gritty survivors as they faced off against the legions of the undead. You groaned when they made stupid mistakes and got themselves killed for it. You knew you could do better. You’d seen it all. You had a plan.

You didn’t last five seconds.

When the first zombie crashed through the window of your bedroom you were too scared to run. You screamed like a girl. Your foot got caught in the tangle of cords by your bed. And right before the undead monster sunk his teeth into your neck, you literally wet yourself in fear.

You lay in a pool of your own blood on the floor, and you wondered how it had come to this. Other people were supposed to die. Not you. The zombie apocalypse was supposed to be fun. But this wasn’t fun. This was dying.

You cried like a baby. Your tears and your blood mingled with the stain from the time you spilled your drink and didn’t bother to clean it up because you were in the middle of a really good game.

At 6:27 pm you died. At 6:28 you came back. You got up off the floor and went down the hall to the living room where your mother was just getting home from shopping. She tried to ask you about the broken window, but before she could finish the sentence you tore her throat out.

She looked at you with eyes that didn’t understand, eyes that had never seen a zombie movie. But by that time you didn’t care anymore.

Then again…maybe you never did.