Back to the 80's

“You sure about this?” asked Brody, stepping inside the cabin. The wooden floor creaked as his foot touched the floor. “Here looks a little bit creepy.”

“I’m sure it’s okay,” assured Thomas, brushing his curls out of his forehead. “My uncle used to live here. We can use it in here as a refuge for a few days, and then we can get the hell out of here.”

“You better be telling the truth about this, Curlyshit.” Brody frowned, his eyebrows looking more like aunibroww than anything. “Because if we die here, I’ll make sure to kill you.”

That didn’t sound coherent to Thomas. But he got on with the idea. He wasn’t going to let anything happen to his friends, not after what had happened to his best friend and the other friends he had watched die.

Approximately a week or two ago (time was fuzzy when you didn’t have a watch), there had been a zombie invasion in his hometown. He didn’t know what the causes of the zombie invasion were, but he supposed that it was because of some lab or something. It always happened like that in the movies. Zombies escaped; they began turning everyone into zombies. And now we were the ones who had managed to survive.

Now we were on the run.

The inside of the house smelled like burnt lavender, with a touch of forgotten wood. Many of the wooden boards were missing nails or were cracked, showing a hole that led to something I didn’t want to know. All the furniture was made of wood, including a desk, a table with its four fancy chairs, the doors, and the place in the kitchen. It was a super small, one-story-long cabin, but it was comfy enough for four friends.

“Oh, look! A TV!” Brody pointed out a big box that had a black screen on the front. It was standing on a wooden stand. “Why is it too . . .?”

“Boxy?” completed Katt for him. Tom hadn’t realized he had been in here; he had been so quiet over the journey. “It’s an eighties TV. They used to be boxy and super big because of the . . . you’d never understand. The point is that technology has evolved. And this thing . . .” he pointed his muscled arm to the TV. “Won’t work. Too old.”

Brody turned his face from the TV to Katt a dozen times, doubting, “I’ll try to fix it. I know how to fix things.”

“Like you fixed the boat?” Tom prompted.

“That was an accident.”

“Or the lights? Those were my flashlights, the only ones.”

“And I’m sorry about that. But . . . I’m sure I can fix this. Besides, it’s a freaking TV. Won’t affect anything we do or say.”

Tom shrugged “As you say.” He turned around “I’ll go make the beds and prepare everything in there. I’m sure it’ll be a long night.”

“Look. There’s knives in here!” shouted Gregory out of nowhere. Tom turned and saw him in the kitchen, all the pans and forks out of their places. “I’m sure we can use these to kill and chop zombie heads.”

“Or kill animals,” said Katt, massaging his belly. “I’m getting hungry. What has it been? Three days of eating leaves? I’m not a big fan of eating leaves.”

“No one is.”

“Hey, Gregory!” Tom shouted, “Just be sure to clean up all . . .” He made a waving move toward all the disaster “… that. And do whatever you want. Just make sure to bring food to the house.”

“I’m vegan, guys,” said Brody, standing by the TV, inspecting a way to open it. “Make sure to bring me—”

“Shut up. We’re bringing you meat,” said Gregory, playing with a knife in his hand. “We’re bringing everyone meat.”

“We?” asked Katt.

“We. You and me. I can’t risk getting out at night alone. Not with the zombies roaming in every single corner.”

“But, what if we see one zombie?”

“We kill it.”

“And what about a horde? A horde you can’t escape.”

“Well,” he said as he looked around the whole room. “We die bravely. And make sure that you die bravely, too. I can’t expect anything else from you.” He patted Katt on the shoulder with the no-knife hand. Katt gulped, maybe fearing he would be stabbed to death. “C’mon, Katt. We’re going off.”

And they both got out of the cabin. Katt’s big figure looked funny by the side of Gregory. It was like seeing hulk by the side of a minion. The differences in height came from their different sports. Katt was a defensive end in football, and Gregory was a boxer.

Tom turned to Brody. “Guess it’s only the two of us.”

“Guess so,” he turned towards me. “You know if, by any chance, there are some screwdrivers on here?”

“Er, I don’t— Well, you can use knives. I think those can work as a substitute.”

He nodded. “Thanks. By the way, there is an Atari console in here. We can play later if you want. To calm the nerves or something.”

“Sure,” Tom answered. If you fix it. He didn’t say that last part.

He walked to the small bedroom where he used to sleep the night when his uncles used to give him the cabin for trips or things like that. He was used to seeing everything in complete order, so he wasn’t surprised when the first thing that he saw were the beds made and the floor tidy. Not even a zombie apocalypse could get this house out of control.

He wondered where his uncles were. He remembered his uncle’s voice saying every time, “Tommy, we love you so much.” He didn’t like it, but now he missed it. He missed his mom’s voice as well as his uncles’; the bark of the dog that couldn’t let him sleep; and the board games they used to play on the kitchen table. He missed all of those things.

Tom took a seat on the edge of the bed and grabbed a photo that was lurking in the side drawer. It was a photo of him with his uncle from three or so years in the past. Tom looked so young; the freckles and acne on his cheeks were nowhere to be seen. His face had a touch of doubt, and his curls were shorter than now.

Tom traced his fingers across the photograph, a weary smile forming on his face. By his right side stood his uncle, wearing one of those lumberjack checkered shirts that combined so well with his grown-out white beard. He looked badass. Tom tried to smile at the photo. He hoped that his uncle would still be alive.

While Katt and Gregory were away, Tom took the time to barricade every window on the house. He grabbed loose wooden planks from the floor and started piling them up on windows for extra security, all done with a hammer and a nail he had found in one of those rooms. Brody kept asking for tools to fix the TV, making Tom go back to the tools room about a dozen times. The TV didn’t seem to be anywhere near working. But Brody had said he was going to fix it.

“So . . .” said Brody. Tom turned to see and saw the box of the TV opened, and Brody was trying to fix it.

“So?” he asked, holding a hammer and some nails on both of his hands. “You sure you aren’t just worsening the situation? The TV looks far past dead to me.”

“Nah. It’s fixable. Just trust me. Look here,” he pointed to a part inside the TV box. “This is a burned circuit, but I can fix it. You just trust me.”

“You better.” Brody kept working on the TV, humming as he cut some cables. “What were you going to tell me?”

“Tell you about what?”

“You said ‘so’”

“I didn’t”

“Yeah. You literally said ‘so’ out loud, and that’s why I began talking to you. If you hadn’t said anything, I wouldn’t have said anything.

“Ohh, that?” Brody clicked his tongue. “Right, right. I was just going to ask you if you were still in love with Caty.”

“You’re crazy. How can you be thinking about something like that in the middle of our problem? Didn’t you see Juliet? He was a zombie, and Caty could be one too.”

“So positive”

Juliet was the zombie girlfriend of Brody—or, well, he thought she was his girlfriend. Long story short, there was a zombie apocalypse in our town. Brody saw a girl walking through the flames; he began flirting with her but then realized she was a zombie. Then Gus threw him a karate kick in the face, and she was decapitated. Rest in peace, Gus, and also, Juliet.

And now there was no way that Brody could possibly be thinking that Caty was alive and that Tom could still flirt with her. He was probably just being stupid because he wanted to have a conversation with Tom. Tom decided not to comment anymore on that.

Hopefully, Gregory and Katt arrived just in time.

They both looked exhausted, like if they had run a triple marathon each, and then went into the sauna to take a rest. They were screaming in sweat and blood. Just as they opened the door, they fell to their knees on the floor.

“Oh my freaking—”

Tom didn’t think twice; he dropped his hammer and the nails on the floor and went to help his friends. Their foreheads were sweating like crazy, and their eyes were drifting from place to place, as if expecting something bad to happen. Their chests went up and down as they tried to find balance in their bodies. The scratches on their arms weren’t anywhere good, and the red drops of blood that combined with the sweating made it worse. They also smelled like a sock that you had in your drawer for centuries.

“What happened to you two guys?” asked Brody, standing besides me.

“I-I-There—We found a horde of zombies and . . .” Katt gasped for breath. “And I think they’re following us.”

“We’re screwed,” muttered Brody.

“At least I barricaded the windows . . .”

“It’s a horde of about a hundred zombies. We barely made it out.”

“But good news.” Gregory lifted the bag from Walmart he was carrying. “We brought some canned foods.”

That didn’t sound like good news to Thomas. He kept thinking of ways to fight or to destroy the horde of zombies, but all the ways seemed impossible to realize. They didn’t have any bazooka, and the knives weren’t going to be of much help when the zombies knew how to run. Punching them wasn’t a good option either. A scratch, and you would be a zombie. By a miracle, Gregory and Katt hadn’t gotten any of those, just tree scratches for them.

By some miracle, Brody had also managed to fix the TV, which was now playing a black-and-white image that made a lot of noise. Like the static of a radio or something. He said that he was going to fix it, and he was going to play some Atari that was plugged in there.

Tom wasn’t bothered about that. He just felt that they were doing the wrong thing. If a horde of a hundred zombies was coming to their place, why did they just stay? Yeah, he understood that Katt and Gregory were hurt and were now watching Brody fix the TV, hoping for the movies to start. Tom didn’t care about that; after all they had been through, he just wanted to survive.

“Guys. I think it’s fixed,” said Brody. Tom dropped the can of food and looked across from the kitchen. “I don’t know anything about this game. But, everyone up to play it?”

The interface of the game was strange. It looked like one of those retro games that you found on the arcade and were so cool, with their neon lights and the word START. The only thing was that I didn’t know anything about this game, ‘Back to the 80’s’? What kind of game was that? Tom only knew Mario Bros. and Pac-Man at most.

“We have to get out of here, Brody. We can’t be playing just games until zombies come to us and kill us alive.”

“Zombies don’t kill. They just turn you into a zombie.”

“It’s the same. You understand me.”

Brody locked eyes with Tom. “Please, just one game. Katt and Gregory are going to play too.”

Tom clenched the canned food in his hand, looking at Gregory and Katt, who were already holding their controllers in their hands. Tom sighed. “How do you play it?” he asked, leaving the canned food in the kitchen. He decided it would be for later. He just wanted to relax.

“I thought you’d never say that.” Brody handed a controller to Thomas, who took a seat on the sofa. It felt like a rock. “I don’t know this game. So we’ll just try to figure it out.”

He pressed a button, and things then happened so fast. A flash of light illuminated the whole room, forcing Tom’s eyes to close abruptly. He felt a stingy sensation all across his body, like if he were getting electrocuted by those games, we’re you held your two hands and saw to where you lasted. This felt strange.

He felt his body swimming in a sea of particles; he couldn’t see the room anymore, nor his friends. Tom was in a white sea, waiting for something to change, waiting for things to be different.

Then he appeared at a mall.

Yeah. You heard right. A mall.

The people passing by their surroundings were happy; it was as if nothing had happened and the zombie apocalypse wasn’t real. They looked so normal. Tom hadn’t seen another person in a matter of weeks, so now he wanted to say hi to a random person and hug him until he said no. They were kids of their age, all happy, and having a good time talking with their friends as they went to the arcade. That looked so . . . old.

Everything looked odd and old, Tom noticed. The signs for the locals were old-fashioned. Like if the mall was stuck in the past. Stuck in time. He resisted the urge to let his jaw fall wide open.

“Why the heck are we in a mall?” Gregory was the first to talk. Tom took a quick glance around and saw that he was with his friends. Their clothes look different. Too colorful. Tom realized his clothes were the same. “And why the heck am I cured? What about these clothes? I don’t like wearing Metallica shirts.”

Metallica shirts definitely didn’t suit him. He was wearing one with a leather jacket and some loose jeans. If he hadn’t that intimidating look, Tom would’ve laughed so hard that he would pee on his mini . . . shorts?—why was he wearing mini shorts?

“You look so ridiculous,” Brody pointed out. Tom thought he was laughing about him. But then he looked at Katt.

Bizarre was the word that described him the best. He was wearing some tight women’s Lycra of pink color, with a Batman T-shirt and a black coat on top. He was the worst of all of us.

“I didn’t choose this,” Katt scolded.

“You look like Mark. You do know Mark, right?”

Everyone knew Mark.

“Guys, I think we have a bigger problem,” Tom said. “I think we’re back in the 80’s.”

The realization of them being stuck in the 80’s felt like a ton of bricks falling down into their heads. The mall, the clothes, the neon signs, and the people—everything screamed that they were in their eighties. Brody was the first to react.

“Wait, you are saying that we time-traveled or something? And how the hell did we end up at a mall? This can’t be right.”