Undead: The Journal of the Thinking Zombie (Short Story)

Chapter 2: Outside

I finally reach an exit, managing to get myself outside without alerting anyone. There are plenty more zombies stumbling around and bodies litter the ground everywhere. The streets are scarred with black skid marks and blood and scattered papers. Bullet holes line the walls near broken shop windows, where devices of all kinds lay smashed and broken on their sides.

This place fell fast. The bleak and desolated sight rattles me noticeably. It's complete and utter turmoil. How did this happen? What happened to everyone?

What is everyone? I don't have a clue what this place was like, but I can guess that it wasn't like this.

I start at a slow limp, hobbling through the streets among the other clumps of zombies. As I walk past one building, my eye catches on a reflective piece of glass. I can see myself in the shattered image.

My skin is yellowish and my eyes look hollow; red rimmed and mixed with the milky grey inside them. My lips are brown and stretched, two thin lines on a sunken face. My chin is still covered with the blood from my meal.

I look at my hands and body, noticing a bloody bite mark in my forearm.

"Is this the reason I have come to be like this?" I inquire.

I notice a nearby group of zombies shuffling past me, mouths hanging open and some limbs torn off. I groan to them. They don't give me a second glance, and I become impossibly sadder. Can't anyone understand me?

The group joins a herd of others gathering nearby. I decide to hobble towards it. Maybe there's safety in numbers.

I stand amongst the crowd of undead bodies, bored out of my rotten skull. This is what they want to do all day? Isn't there anything we could do other than this?

Some screams erupt from a street nearby and some of the crowd turns towards it and limps off. I follow out of habit.

Ahead of all the greyish skulls, I can see a pair of humans. Well, I think that they're humans. They don't look at all like the creatures around me. There's an obese man and a frightened looking woman wearing a lot of furs, and they're cornered. They scream again as we get closer, and a few zombies bite into them once they're close enough.

I join in on the feeding frenzy, the smell of the warm blood eradicating my nostrils as I munch on the fresh meat. It's like an animal desire to keep eating.

I get that full feeling again and hobble away, leaving my comrades to finish the meal.

I walk through the streets, looking at humankind's creations and wondering what it was like before the zombies came.

As I ponder life's questions, I find myself bored with walking. I settle down on a lone bench, simply resting and observing.

A few humans dash by in a fright, weapons on their belts and strapped across their backs. Zombies wander by, snarling and growling as they search for more food.

But not me.

I sit.

Alone.

Somehow, I don't think I'm quite like the other monsters that surround me.