Zombie Queen

Later

Later

Put simply, the idea was insane. It would never work even if she did get a chance to try it, which was about just as unlikely, as she doubted many other zombies would be up for it. But where was the harm in trying? That was what Carl had convinced her, down in the basement while the army stormed over head, voice a raspy grunt while blood poured from his fresh wound. ‘Where’s the harm in trying?’ he had whispered with a morbid grin, ‘we’re already dead.’

At first, she had laughed. She assumed he was joking. He was the pessimistic, hopeless, battle-hardened one. She expected him to grunt at her ridiculous fantasy, tell her she had to be realistic. This wasn’t like the movies, after all. Never before had she expected that he would be the one convincing her to do something so daring. And even less had she expected to ever be stood in front of a crowd of drooling, hungry, blood-thirsty zombies all eyeing her as if she were a problem yet to be properly assessed.

One zombie stepped forwards. He was big and bulky, had probably been in the army before, but he had a noticeable abundance of skin still on his body, suggesting he was fairly new to the business. That didn’t make him any less intimidating. If anything, the new ones were the most dangerous. They weren’t used to the hunger yet.

‘I’m still not sure,’ he addressed her with a deep, rumbling voice, ‘what exactly you’re suggesting.’

Jess swallowed nervously. She tried not to fiddle with her shirt; that would have been a bad look. How could she expect a group of fighting men to follow her if she presented herself as a fidgety girl who couldn’t stop fussing at her clothes. She straightened her stance and tried to exude an air of effortless confidence, though it was hard to appear in control when your audience was made up of literal monsters.

‘You’ve all probably seen the movies,’ she began, which was a really bad start. An exasperated groan spread through the crowd, and she quickly struggled to regain their interest. She found Carl’s face in the crowd, just like he told her she should if things ever seemed overwhelming. She looked at him and felt a slow relief come over her- his face flaking and many of his features gone, but his eyes still mercifully unchanged- and he gave her confidence. She held his gaze as she attempted, again to convince them.

‘They may have once been fiction!’ She made sure she shouted loud enough to get everyone’s attention. She wouldn’t have wanted to be repeating herself; now there was a really bad look. ‘But what has happened to us that seems at all real? If you had told me, four years ago, everything that was going to happen... I would have dismissed it as a story, too!’ She smiled eagerly as she noticed a few heads begin to nod in the crowd. It was an experience pretty much all of them could relate to, after all.

She remembered how popular zombie movies had been, back when the idea of the undead had simply been a popular, fun horror trope. Ironically, she had always quite enjoyed those movies. Horrified by the various gruesome interpretations of zombies, always rooting for the small band of survivors. There was one movie in particular that she remembered as especially exciting, and it was the one that had been the inspiration for this scheme of hers.

She couldn’t quite remember the title of the film- it had been in a different lifetime that she had watched it. She had vague but pleasant memories, though, of watching the film with Carl. They had been curled up on the small sofa in her living room, and what she most vivdly remembered was how they were sitting- so close, but not quite touching. Maybe she couldn’t remember what the movie was called because her attention that night had been more focused on the boy next to her, so close that his slightly sour breath had tickled her cheek. They had probably been comfortably drunk, and they had definitely been content. Little did they know how much they should have savoured that feeling.