A Bible For the Zombie Apocalypse

Part One: The Medic

Chapter 1: Chase On the Road

In the beginning it wasn't like this. It started out good. SOMEONE (or something?) made all this--not the mess we live in now--but everything before the mess: before the first dirty diaper was ever thrown out of the window of a car as it sped down the highway. Before junkyards and cesspools and water treatment plants. Before jails. Before hospitals. Before cemeteries. Before all the carnage that came with this plague.

Cannibalism happens on a spectrum. Some zombies actually try not to eat you. And some survivors do worse things than a zombie would ever dream of.

The question is: what am I?

Oh crap! Sorry! This is what always happens when I talk to myself. How ironic my mother named me Chase! How could she have known?  My entire life is a chase!  All day long they chase me: sometimes fast, sometimes slowly.

And--lucky me--I get the job of putting them out of their misery.

First it's just one set of footsteps--not regular footsteps, but a sort of dragging, shambling, clomping sound: every zombie has a signature walk, or drag, or whatever you want to call the way they move as they follow you. Then another walker/dragger joins in. Then another--you get the picture. At some point the tail reaches a critical mass or volume level and you just know you have to stop and take care of the situation, before it takes care of you.

This is what I do every day. The sounds behind me reach that critical level where I know I have to do something. I stop. I turn around and take in the threat. How many? How fast are they? The oldest ones are the least dangerous. But somehow they hurt me the most.

Why?

Because snuffing out the old ones--and by old I mean the ones who became zombies way back when, regardless of their age when they turned. You know? The hurt ones whose bodies are so ravaged by disease and the elements they can barely drag themselves along. Killing those poor people--I mean, things/zombies--weighs in heaviest on my conscience.

Why?

Because they are so pathetic. Not that they feel the pain of their second death. They don't even feel the pain of the horrible condition their bodies are in as they drag them along, sanding down their damaged parts on the broken pavement! What bugs me is, their parts—whatever is left of them—are recognizably human.

That's my problem.

I don't like killing humans.

Especially the older ones. They want to eat you so bad! They keep on moving forward, however slowly, using every last spark of their physically illogical and scientifically unexplainable energy reserves to drive their ravaged machines--machines that anyone without the plague would have given up on months ago, no matter how hungry they were. It almost makes you want to give them the thing they are so desperate for...almost but not quite, since the thing they want so badly is you--or at least the living meat you are made of.

It hurts me to kill them.

So why do I kill them, you ask?

Because even though the oldest zombies are the least dangerous of zombies, they are still dangerous! I used to be afraid of the dark before the apocalypse. But having zombies out there continually on the prowl for something--I mean someone--to eat, takes my old, childish fear of the dark to a whole new level.

Is it a mercy to put them out of their misery?

I don't know. I've watched them feasting and it seems to make them so happy, if only for a brief moment. Putting them down prevents them from ever having a chance at happiness. It also keeps them from being the monsters they are--filthy, depraved cannibals whose greatest joy is to eat a fellow human being!

Putting them down protects other survivors, too. Not just me.

So then why do I feel so guilty for doing it?

Now I lost my train of thought.

Where was I?  Oh yeah. Assess the threat behind me. How many? How fast?

The faster zombies in the hungry line behind me have to go first. If they aren't neutralized first they will be on me in a flash while my attention is on a slower one.

So, my first move after I turn around and assess the range of predators behind me is to take out the fastest mover by throwing this cool army knife called a Ka-Bar, which I pilfered off of a twice dead UWM soldier (dead the first time from the plague; dead the second time from a headshot he never saw coming). Then I swing up my M4, which I normally leave hanging from its sling at my chest as I walk, so it's readily accessible. I take out the second fastest zombie with a double tap to the head. Then, saving the more devastating ammo for the faster zombies, I draw my semiautomatic handgun from the holster on my right hip, a Berretta M9, the magazine loaded with my last five rounds of 9mm ammo. With my left hand still holding the M4 at low ready, I take down the remaining 3 trailers with the handgun, leaving 2 rounds of 9mm ammo to spare.

Once I clear out the visible threat, I bring the M4 up again and, putting my eye to the high-tech scope, I slowly and methodically clear my surroundings. I've had some close calls in the past that taught me the importance of this last step. I used to think I was  safe, once I'd cleared out all the visible zombies behind me. I'd sigh and turn around to face the road ahead and start trudging forward, only to be surprised by the sound of multiple feet rushing toward my back.

They come from inside houses, behind cars, trees—anyplace a normal person could hide. Does that mean these plague victims (I call them zombies) are smart enough to hide on purpose so they can ambush you? I'm beginning to wonder. Some definitely seem smarter than others. Unfortunately all the (smart?) hiders seem to be fast, too.

The sneaky, fast, hiding zombies are a relatively new threat on the road--a new obstacle that I've had to learn how to handle in order to survive.

I'm getting better at survival with all this practice at it. The road actually makes you practice. On the road, you either practice and get better at survival, or you die.

It's that simple.

Another option would be for me to stop talking to myself. If I were stealthy and quiet, hardly any zombies would follow me. But the silence of the aftermath scares me more than the zombies do. And as weird as it sounds, it's less lonely with people following.

Okay so they're zombies.

But still.