Lonely World

A 3.9 GPA in high school (damn you, gym class). Endless extracurricular activities. Graduating in the top ten of my class in college. And all for what? To end up eating brains for a living. Literally.

See, the thing that no movie tells you about being a zombie is that it’s not nearly as miserable as being a recent graduate is. Because when you’re a zombie you don’t exactly have any other option. You just accept that that’s your life now and learn to live with it. Just walk around and eat when the opportunity arises.

However, when you’ve just finished college you have all this invisible pressure and expectations hanging over your shoulders, usually taking in the form of the dissapointed lines forming in your family’s brows at how it’s been months and you still haven’t managed to find a job.

And it’s not for a lack of trying. I practically spent every single day after graduating applying and applying to everything. From internships to jobs to whatever I could find. I spent so much time filling application forms with the same questions on hundreds of different career sites that I always finished each day with a headache and a good cry in the shower.

Because I didn’t receive a single call back nor interview appointment. Not to the jobs related to my major, to the ones not related and not even to the retail and restaurant ones that I applied for. It really made me question myself because then, all my effort had been for nothing. Was I really that unattractive to the job market? Was I just not worth it?

In summary, everything just sucked. I was lost and I couldn’t find my way out. So, turning into a zombie wasn’t so bad. I mean, the process wasn’t fun but life in a post-apocalyptic world as a living dead was more or less okay.

If anything, what I regretted most was how I went out. What a stupid way to die, seriously. It wasn’t that much of a surprise, I always knew that if the apocalypse came I would be one of the firsts to go. But what I didn’t expect was that my death would be the result of being pushed in front of the zombie horde that attacked the mall I was in with a friend by said friend.

It was in the early days of the apocalypse, when the first cases were sprouting but the public didn’t know much yet. But with my luck, of course I ended up in one of the places where the first big zombie groups decided to appear.

Everyone started to run when we saw them approaching but they managed to get awfully close, and so in an attempt to save herself, my supposed friend, Olivia, pushed me to the floor so that I would serve as an appetizer, giving her the chance to escape.

“Hey!” I heard someone shout. I looked towards the source as a zombie woman jumped on top of me. A guy had seen my friend pushing me and he glared at her in disbelief that someone would do that. His gaze turned towards me and he tried to come closer but two other people kept dragging him forward. “We have to help her! We have to!” he kept yelling. But the people with him clearly cared more about him than my friend did for me because they managed to make him keep moving. Still, as he was dragged away, his gray eyes locked with mine. An apologetic and comforting look in them. As if he didn’t want me to be alone during my final moments. 

And then he was gone.

I couldn’t fight the zombie attacking me, she was too strong. As the zombie took her first bite at my shoulder, I saw how another horde appeared out of nowhere from the side and five zombies jumped on Olivia, diving into the flesh of her limbs and torso immediately.

Ha. Karma, bitch. Was it worth it?

Honestly, if those zombies hadn’t killed her (because with how they left her, there wasn’t enough of her body left to transform), I would have hunted her myself in revenge in my newly permanent Halloween costume of pale skin, dirty clothes and bloody shoulder.

So, I adapted to zombie life quite well. As I said, you don’t do much besides waiting for food to come walking by, and at least, you don't have to worry about finding a job, being a living dead is a full time occupation. As a zombie, everything is instinct, you don’t even think much. I mean, we have thoughts and memories but it’s like watching it all happen to someone else. There aren’t feelings attached to them. You’re just a hungry walking shell.

However, there are some more ambitious zombies than others. Some of them move in groups, trying to have a greater chance at catching dinner, while others like to be quite violent and don’t let you share their food. I don’t even have the ambition to seek out food for myself. I mean, if a stupid survivor walks right into where I’m hanging out, I’m not going to refuse it, but I don’t go walking miles into the woods like others. Huh, probably the reason why I didn’t get that perfect grade in PE. I usually just hang back until a colleague of mine finishes their meal and then I go for their leftovers.

So, that’s life for me now. Walking around, having the occasional bite, and staring into the distance. My only source of entertainment replaying Olivia dying over and over again. If I still had feelings I would burst out laughing every time I remembered it. The look of panic in her eyes as they began to eat her, and how she looked towards where I was getting my shoulder chewed off, like asking me for help. The audacity.

I sound like a sadist but I swear that I didn’t even enjoy gory movies before. But man, is it satisfying remembering how the one that betrayed you got a taste of their own medicine.

I don’t remember how I ended up in this small town from the mall but it’s where I spend my days now. I hear some noise to my right and I move as fast as my slow zombie reflexes allow me to look towards the source. I think I’ve seen someone hide behind a container.

My empty stomach urges me to go towards the passing visitor but I don’t move. They’re fast and they seem small, the reward is not worth the effort. So I just keep walking down the street. It’s deserted, no zombies in sight except me. I can see why a survivor would choose this town to try and find some supplies, mostly safe from brain eating creatures and it doesn’t look like it’s been raided that much.

Next thing I know, I feel a sting in my neck and I lose consciousness. Which is new, since I haven't slept since the day that I turned. Zombies don’t have the need for it. When I wake up, I’m in some storage room, my hands tied to a pipe. Shit. I really thought that any possibility of being kidnapped ended when you transformed into a zombie.

I jerk my hands, trying to break free. Then I freeze.

I shouldn’t be able to do that. Such a rapid movement. Zombies don’t move like that. I look at my hands in disbelief. What’s going on?

“Alex! She’s awake!” a young voice comes from the open door.

I look to see a blonde girl, she seems to be around eleven years old. She has a wide grin on her lips, like a mad scientist. Running footsteps are heard from the other room until a dark haired boy, who looks the same age as her, joins her at the side. He throws his hands to his head at my wide eyed expression.

“Oh my god,” he says. Then, louder, “Oh my god!” He turns to the girl. “Julie! We did it! We did it!”

Julie squeals and grabs the boy’s arms. They hold to each other in excitement. Julie laughs. “I know! It actually worked!”

“You’re a genius!” who I guess is Alex exclaims.

Julie not only laughs, she cackles. Well, she certainly isn’t beating the mad scientist allegations. “We both are!”

Then they turn to me and approach me excitedly, kneeling in front of me, calm as ever, not a trace of fear in their features, as if I couldn’t just eat their throats without a single remorse. A weird feeling in my stomach pulls my attention, almost as if wanting to puke at the thought.

“How are you feeling?” Alex asks.

“I’m Julie, and he’s Alex. What’s your name?”

“Do you have any weird symptoms?”

“When were you turned?”

“Are you thirsty? Do you want water?”

They shoot off questions in such quick succession that I can barely keep up. My head starts to ache. I don’t remember the last time I felt pain. Probably when that zombie first bit my shoulder. The kids are so eager that it’s throwing me off, making me recoil against the wall in my place on the floor. It just… it feels so weird.

Wait.

I’m feeling. I felt repulsion, pain, and confusion all in the span of twenty seconds. Zombies don’t do that. What have these kids done?

“What…” I utter. My throat feels sore. I haven’t said anything but grunts since I was turned. 

“Oh my god, you’re talking!” Julie says, clapping her hands together in excitement.

“You’re cured!” Alex explains. “I mean, not exactly cured, you still look like a zombie, sick looking skin and all but I bet that you don’t want to eat us, right?”

“I…” I pause for a second. All the thoughts that I haven’t been able to process in who knows how long swirling in my head, but he’s right. The human flesh hunger is gone. Nothing in me is pulling me to rip them apart. “I don’t know what’s going on.”

Julie laughs again. Her happy, almost borderline crazy behavior scares me. “We cured you! We’ve been working on an injection for months. And it finally worked! There've been a few close calls with other test subjects but with you it actually worked!”

Alex cuts the ties binding me, freeing me. I hold my hands close to myself, still not fully trusting that this is all happening.

“How?” I ask. How could two eleven year olds possibly have found the cure for the apocalypse?

“Well…” Alex starts.

“We were in college when all of this started,” Julie rushes to say.

“In college?”

Alex nods. “We’re very smart.” Right. They’re gifted.

“We’ve been trying different things in the injections here and there but then we thought, what if what makes a zombie is that they have lost their humanity? And so we tweaked the cure to include a hormone enhancer that focuses on the emotional connections in the brain,” Julie says so fast that it’s hard to fully understand all of it.

I look at them dumbfounded. It all seems so impossible.

“What’s your name?” Alex asks.

It takes me a moment to remember it. “Maddy.”

Their smiles widen.

***

And so, my zombie life has turned from a boring endless cycle of walking and eating to becoming the nanny to two crazy preteens. It takes some time getting used to normal life again but Julie and Alex guide me through every step of the way. They take care of me and make sure that I’m okay. I begin to eat human food again. It tastes amazing. Nobody tells you that when you’re a zombie you don’t really register what a brain tastes like. I’m glad it doesn’t.

Julie and Alex welcome me with open arms in their little group and now that I can feel again, it doesn’t take me long to care for them. They’re loud, smart and fearless, but they’re still kids and I can tell that it relieves them that there’s someone looking out for them again. At first I thought that they were siblings but then they tell me that they were just classmates who then became the best of friends.

They explain that the injection that they used on me was the last one that they had and so our goal is collecting what they need to make more. We don’t have the resources to make one on a grand scale so we just figure to go one by one. Once they’re able to make another injection, we need a test subject.

They always chose isolated zombies who could be easy to take on and that didn’t seem to be extremely violent. Eventually, we reach another town. There are a couple of small groups of zombies so that’s a no-no but then Alex notices one hanging alone on the outskirts of town.

“That one,” he whispers as he points him out.

The blond zombie reminds me a lot of me. He seems to be about my age and do the same thing as I did. Stare into space. Basking in the loneliness that you can’t feel, that I couldn’t feel until these crazy but lovely kids saved me. The zombie doesn’t even flinch when Julie accidentally kicks a can.

I tilt my head in thought. He looks familiar but I can’t place him where.

I volunteer to give him the injection. I don’t want to put the kids at risk. Besides, even though the cure technically reverted me back to human, at least in consciousness, I still look like a zombie (the kids do what they can with how little they have), my skin pale and my brown hair and eyes a lifeless color, so it should be easy to sneak up on the zombie.

“Okay,” I whisper to myself. I take a deep breath to gather all the courage that I have and approach the zombie. He turns around just when I reach his back but I manage to inject him the cure before he can do anything. He drops on the floor just like I did.

***

I look at the guy tied to the chair. He looks peaceful with his eyes closed, resting. Nothing in his appearance has changed and I don’t know what it is but I just know that the cure has worked. Something in the stranger’s posture is different, like he doesn’t have the shadow of death on him anymore. It’s almost as if all he needed was a good night’s sleep to be human again. I sigh. I wish it were that easy.

I’m leaning against the door to the room where we put him in, keeping watch. Julie and Alex wanted to see him waking up but they needed to rest and so I sent them to sleep. They protested all the way to their sleeping bags, a small smile on my face. It was in those moments I bet they wished they'd never turned me back. But as soon as they laid down they were out like a light. 

The guy in the chair jerks awake, looking at his surroundings startled. I freeze, standing upright, suddenly not knowing what to do. It’s something going through it but watching it happen is an entirely different thing. He clocks me in the doorway.

“Where am I?” he says alarmed.

His voice makes Julie wake up in the other room behind me, and she sits up as she rubs her eyes. “What’s going on?”

Then she realizes in a gasp that our new friend is awake, gives a hard push to Alex’s sleeping form and rushes to greet the stranger, pouring over her questions with her characteristic mad scientist smile.

“What…?” Alex says, sitting up as well, his hair a bird nest. His eyes widen when he sees Julie interrogating the stranger and just like Julie, rushes to him.

The young man flicks his eyes between them, trying to understand what’s going on, until his eyes drift over to me. Watching the wonder in Julie and Alex’s faces had relaxed my tense posture but as his eyes put the spotlight on me, I freeze again. He looks at me for a long second and then notices something at my side. The bite wound on my shoulder matching the one on his neck.

“You’re like me.” I nod slowly. The bewildered look in his clear eyes throws me back to the day I was turned. The same gray eyes that looked at me as the zombie grabbed me and that belonged to the only person who had tried to help me.

“I know you,” he says. The kids look at us shocked.

I nod again.

***

Turns out if caring for the kids was easy, it’s just as easy with Will, the newest addition to our little family. He’s kind and funny and a little bit broken. That, we all have in common. I have no idea what exactly made all of us click so well. Maybe it was the loneliness that we all felt before finding each other.

We keep trekking around our corner of the world. We haven’t encountered any other survivors yet and the cure resources are scarsing more than last time. But we’re good. We’re okay. We’re happy.

And I don’t need perfect grades or a well paying job to demonstrate my worth. They don’t love me for what I can do but for who I am.

We’re doing a small stop to rest in an abandoned gas station when Julie and Alex find a cat and they start to play with it. I watch them fondly. Will approaches me and laces his fingers through mine. I squeeze his hand.

I was lonely before. And after too. After all, zombies get lonely too. But right now, all I feel is warmth in my dead heart.