A Bible For the Zombie Apocalypse

Chapter 6: Why Live?

Is it really just survival instinct?  Is instinct the only reason I'm willing to trudge down the dead streets of these dead towns, talking to myself and collecting zombies? 

Then I slaughter the poor creatures--the closest thing I have to human company!  Which makes me sad.  I don't like killing them.

I wish they could change.

Even if they never got their brains back and all they did was walk along beside me, even if they never stopped stinking up the air around me with the smell of death and infection and foul blood, even if they never stopped wanting to eat me--as long as they didn't actually bite--I'd let them live.

No, I'd go beyond just letting them live. I'd appreciate them.  I'd work on cleaning them up.  Water isn't that hard to come by, if you know where to look.  And I have two bars of lavender-scented soap in my pack.  I found them while scavenging through what was once a very fine hotel.  Not that I bathe very often.  But it is a treat to smell clean once in a while.

I wonder what a bath would do for an older zombie?  They fall apart so easily.  Remember those whole, baked chickens you could get at WalMart back in the day?  Old zombies fall apart like that.  They're fragile.  So I'd have to be careful.  Maybe just a gentle wipe-down and rinse?

Then I'd find some clothes that weren't so ravaged and disgusting.  And shoes, so their constant dragging on the pavement wouldn't keep sanding down what's left of their feet.  

Yeah.  I'd be good to them.  They could be like pets.  I'd take care of them, even feed them--as long as the food wasn't people. 

Take the old zombie in the line that is currently nearing critical mass behind me.  Yeah, his guts are hanging out and he only has half of one leg left, so he has to pull himself along with his damaged hands.  Sounds gross, I know...but I bet I could find him a wheelchair.

And maybe I could figure out a way to get his guts back inside his belly, where they belong.  His skin is too rotten to try sewing his belly closed, but I bet I could make a girdle.  Then I could push him down the road with me and talk to him, instead of just talking to myself.

It sounds so nice.

I mean, the poor, old zombie would still be ugly.  He'd still smell like death, no matter how much lavender soap I used.  But it would feel so good to help him.  To be kind to him instead of slaughtering him.

I miss being nice.

Not that it wouldn't be difficult to have a pet zombie.  Ugh!  As if it were even possible!  But if it were possible...the cold, hard truth is, it would take a lot more energy to keep him than it would to kill him.  And keeping him would be soooo much riskier.  So why do I even bother wasting my time, wishing I could be nice to him?  And why does the idea of being nice to him give me such a feeling of relief?

Seriously, how can my working so hard to stay alive in this lonely, brutal, nightmare of a life, be nothing more than survival instinct?

There's got to be more to it!

A pet zombie would lower my chances of survival.  He'd slow me down.  He'd wear me out.  He'd use up my limited resources.  Killing him makes way more sense from a survival standpoint.  But being nice to him would feel so much better.  Why?  Why would it feel good to take more chances with my life, just so I could be nice to a zombie?

It's a stupid question.  Of course the old, little-kid zombie won't stop biting.  So I'm stuck slaughtering him.  But somehow killing the raveged, child-crawler I imagined pushing along in a wheelchair is twice as hard now.

If only I hadn't imagined being nice to him!

Ugh! I hate to cry.

I hate the hot tears that are streaming down my cheeks as I track the nightmare that is left of a little kid with my pistol.  I only have 2 rounds left, so I need to make them count.

But he's crawling toward me so pitifully!

I try making eye contact.  I even say, "Hey, little zombie," like an idiot, hoping beyond hope that he will look up at me and acknowledge me as something more than just the meal he's literally dying for.

But no.

His eyes are fixed on my neck, where the blood pulsing so close to the surface of my skin is driving him mad with hunger.

Did I mention I hate this?

Either I give up and let him eat me, or I kill him.  Walking away is no different from laying down and letting him eat me.  Why?  Because he'll keep tracking me.  And some night when I've forgotten all about him he'll find me and tear into me as I sleep.  He can't help it.  It's not survival instinct that drives him.  It's madness.  Sheer insanity.

The everyday, dumb zombie will risk everything to feed.  It's an addiction, is what it is--like booze or heroin or morphine.  Only a zombie's addiction to warm, bloody meat is worse, because no one ever gets cured from that.

We still have regular addicts, you know?  Even in the middle of a freaking zombie apocalypse! People who want some mind-altering substance more than health.  More than life.  It actually makes more sense now than it did in the good old days, since life is so much harder and crappier than it used to be.

The substance takes an addict away from it all, albeit temporarily.  And if the substance kills an addict, they really haven't lost anything.  Death is just a more permanent way out of this mess.

So why live?

Wow!  That is a really good question!

Zombies are addicts.  Or maybe it's the other way around?  Either way, "survival" is not their highest priority.  The substance is all that matters to them--the high that takes them away from it all.  They want the warm blood and the meat, at any cost, including their lives.

Only the sneaky, smart ones seem to have anything resembling willpower.  They can forego a meal, temporarily, weighing risk before they attack and feed.  They can hold back, it seems, though not out of mercy, as far as I can tell.  They hold back to increase their chances of getting a meal without getting killed (for the second time) in the process.

Which is really just the addict's need to feed, taken up a level:  from feeding at any cost, to feeding and surviving.  It's not a great life.  It's definitely not noble. 

Then again, I'm not exactly noble either.  But at least I don't want to eat anybody.  It definitely wouldn't give me any kind of high.  Even the full belly I'd get out of the deal wouldn't last long, because the sheer idea of eating another person is enough to make me barf.

Killing zombies helps me survive.  But--unlike some other survivors I've met--I don't get a high out of killing, either.  I hate it.  So that has to mean something, right?

The old zombie--the one I was wishing I could bathe, and put clothes on, and somehow stuff his guts back in, and push around in a wheelchair (since he only has half of one leg left)--I'm guessing he must have been about 8 years old when he turned.  He was a kid once, before the plague turned him into a monster--before he morphed into a warm, bloody, meat addict.

I'm pointing the gun at his head as he wriggles closer.  But somehow I can't make myself pull the trigger until, out of nowhere, there's this cry from somewhere behind me, off to my left, just outside my field of vision.  The wriggler hears it, too.  He snaps his head around and changes direction, picking up his scrabbling pace as he zeroes in on the source of the sound. 

The familiar pop-pop of my handgun registers peripherally as I send my last two rounds of 9mm ammo on a perfect trajectory for the wriggler' head.  Without pausing to confirm the kill, I swing my M4 around and begin scanning the area.

It's a dog!  No, wait--a dog and her pups, the line of them trailing vulnerably behind her.  I mumble a curse as I continue to scope my surroundings, confirming exactly what I was afraid of.  The little family of dogs won't last long.  It looks like a crap-ton of smart zombies heard the same cry the wriggler and I heard, and they are all on their way over for a warm, bloody, meat snack.