Untitled

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It all began a week ago. It may not seem long looking at it in terms of hours or minutes, but to me, it’s been an eternity. I’m held up in the back of a storehouse with three other people and there’s absolutely nothing any of us can do about it. If we leave we face certain peril, and if we stay here we risk starvation. Life’s not fun when the dead live and you never know whose going to make the next attempt to bite your face off…
The news said, during the brief time that they were still on the air, that the dead were walking because of some sort of chemicals that had been buried years ago by some company. It had slowly been seeping into our drinking water; the rats have been affected for some many years. It’s hard to believe, but this chemical was like some sort of fountain of youth, except when it’s absorbed into your body it’s stored in fat and muscle tissue until it finally turns itself on when your body has turned itself off. Spontaneous reanimation due to the carelessness of a few corporate executives who thought nothing of the common man. They’re dead now, too.
Sometimes we sneak up to the roof to watch the chaos. I almost feel bad about it, but sometimes we see people trying to get somewhere safe and we make bets on how long until they start convulsing and spit up that disgusting white foam and join the ranks. I think that’s Mike’s favorite part of the day, sick fuck. It normally takes only a few minutes; I think they smell fear, or bodily fluids or something.
We’ve been trying to find a way out, with little success. They seem to have gathered in the downtown area and flooded the parking lot of this building. It’s not the greatest accommodations, no beds, electricity, or even decent running water. The water’s all brown and untreated, it tastes like when you accidentally swallow lake water, but it’s all we’ve got. Sometimes I can’t sleep because of the loud noises these dead bastards make, but I find some way to get through the night. I’m alive, and that’s all that matters.
Scott’s been the main source of entertainment. Downright stupid, if you ask me. He dangles things from the roof and watches the dead try to grab it. Sometimes, I honestly wish they would grab it and pull him down, just to show him what an idiot he’s been. Then I remember, without him, I’d be stuck in an empty warehouse with Mike and Matt, and the thoughts quickly change to something more optimistic. Maybe the military’d rescue us, if they can even find a way to kill them. Maybe we’d find a way to escape, if we can find some subterranean route to China. Call me a pessimist all you want, but we’re pretty fucked, here.
We’ve traced every spot of this building and so far the only supplies we’ve been able to find are a couple ropes (which Scott uses as his play-things), some bungee cords, a flashlight without working batteries and some poor out-of-towner’s corpse. It’s pretty easy looking at the dead to tell who’s from this city and who’s not. Unlike all those crazy Hollywood movies, the only way the corpses come back to life is if they’ve got a great amount of the chemicals stored up. It doesn’t work on children, and it’s less likely to happen to people who haven’t been drinking the water for long. Matt’s probably the only one of us who has a chance of escaping, one lethal cut and we’re done-for, we become brain-suckers. Matt, on the other hand, gets to die and move on to that place we all dream about. Personally, I wish we were dead at this point.
Looking into the crowd, you can actually make out faces, which is terribly disturbing. So far I’ve seen my uncle, my high school gym teacher, the mayor, and a few other faces I remember from geometry or some other class. Scott doesn’t seem to mind, though. He’s pelted every high school bully with rocks, he’s hit his grandmother with scrap-metal. There may be some deep-seeded problems at hand, but I’m no psychiatrist, so I’ll just leave it at that.
“Are you writing again? Stop being so gay, there’s dead-guys dying to get into this building, and all you can think about is writing in your little journal? Come on!”
“Sorry, man, I figure if we make it out alive I can use these things to get rich.”
“Fag.”
Scott doesn’t like it when I write; I guess he’s consumed with a will to live. He wants to make it out of here. I don’t really care, because we’re going to die anyway. We have no means of escape, and nobody’s going to rescue us. Scott, on the other hand, spends all day (save for the times he’s fucking with the dead guys) trying to come up with some MacGuyver of a plan to escape. By what means, though? Are we going to lasso them to death and beat their bodies with a flashlight? Sounds pretty impractical.
Unlike Scott and I, Mike and Matt tend to try to ignore everything. They spend all day reminiscing and playing tic-tac-toe to keep the mess out of their minds. It may help them, being delusional, but it scares me how they can ignore the seemingly limitless odds stacked against our escape.
“Go fish, Matt”
“Argh! You son of a bitch! That’s the eight time in ten minutes!”
“Don’t blame me because you spent all of high school playing X-Box and I spent it playing Caesar’s Palace on Nintendo”
“That’s only because you’re broke!”
“Suck it, asshole” Mike said in anger, punching him in the face.
“Can’t you idiots fight a little quieter? I’m trying to write”
“FAG!” Scott shouted from the other room.
It really is hard to concentrate on writing about things that really do frighten you, especially when you’ve got two immature kids fighting over who has the best record on Nintendo Track and Field. Personally, I think Scott has them both beat, I remember he once cleared the whole game in under half an hour. Really, it doesn’t matter, because Tetris is and always will be my domain. If zombies were Tetris, we’d be miles from here by now. But, they’re not… They’re zombies… and zombies eat people…
“I got it! We can tie the flashlight to the ropes and use it as an anchor. We can swing it to the next building then climb across” Scott came up with another pointless suggestion.
“Why don’t you try coming up with a plan that will actually work?” I asked.
“I’m not swinging over zombies!” Matt said, actually acknowledging the fact that we were in such a position.
“Why don’t you try sucking my dick, fag?”
I’m not sure why we fight so much, or why we always have, but it’s really not that bad. All these pointless battles of wit (into which Mike enters unarmed) keep our minds off the zombies, making it a little easier to relax. It really does calm the nerves to hear Scott say the words “homo”, “fag”, “queer”, and “gay” about a million times a day, even when he’s directing them at me.
“Dude, when I get out of here, I am so buying the biggest cheeseburger ever.” Mike interrupted our little argument.
“Don’t you think the zombies already killed the cows?” Matt asked.
“Zombie-cows? What are you, a fag?” I asked.
“Hey, what are you, me? Queer.” Scott scolded me.
I looked over at Matt, and for the first time, I actually noticed he was scared. He was looking at the walls and the windows nervously. Mike was still just playing cards, but a couple times he stopped and looked at the windows, too. We all turned our attention to the windows and in one brief moment our sanctuary was violated. Zombies began pouring through the window and falling. Luckily, as they fell about 20 feet the bones in their legs snapped and they couldn’t walk. Zombies don’t feel pain, so it really didn’t stop them. But, it did provide us with enough time to rush upstairs and lock ourselves away in the former managers office.
“Fuck! Look! Those assholes are messing up my solitaire game! I was about to win, god damn it!” Mike shouted half in fear and half in rage.
“We almost died and you’re worried about a card-game? No wonder your mother kicked you out of the house every week.” Matt shouted.
“He wouldn’t have gotten kicked out if he didn’t lose the house in a card game. I mean, who the hell bets the deed to their mother’s house?!”
“Fags” Scott said once more.
The zombies were piling up the stairs, dragging themselves by their decrepit arms, clawing their ways towards us, a couple of them were still able to limp, making things even more dire for us. We lined up across the back wall, keeping far away from any windows or doors. The wall felt uneasy with our weight on it, but we were to afraid to notice. It quickly broke behind us and we fell for what felt like a mile. When we landed we were surprised to see that nobody was injured, and that Mike was still a complete idiot.
“Dude, we totally landed in a hole… This hole saved our lives”
“Mike, shut up for five minutes! We need to find a way out of this building” Matt became the voice of reason once more.
“Yeah, and this hole smells like shit.” Scott waved a hand in front of his face.
“Maybe you shit yourself. It was a long fall, there’s no telling what happened.” I said and braced myself for Scott’s fist lodged in my side.
To my surprise, he didn’t hit me. Instead, he looked around trying to figure out where we were, how we got here, and for a way out.
“Man, I could get us out of here if I had some thread and a couple toothpicks, or maybe a cantaloupe and a pony” Scott said, trying to ease the fear that was now deeply in all of us.
“That’s not funny… That’s retarded” Mike insulted Scott for seemingly the first time ever.
“And queer” I added.
“Let’s feed him to a zombie” Matt stared at Scott.
“Let’s feed him to your mother, Matt” I put him in his place.
There wasn’t much to this hole we were in, except it was dark. Darkness in every direction, even below us. I noticed up above that we had fallen through the cheap wall and fell straight down into one of the old maintenance tunnels. There was a fuse box, but it was rusted shut.
“Man, if Matt didn’t open the door for the zombie delivery man we’d be fine right now” Scott again became the sarcastic asshole we all love.
“Don’t blame it on him, he didn’t say ‘hey, bitches! Come on in, the window’s open!’ and just let them come in here” we stared, bewildered at Mike.
“Did Mike just say something in English?” I asked.
“It’s best not to think about it. Can we just find a way out of here, already?” Scott questioned.
We walked on and on in one direction for at least an hour when we realized that the zombies were now following us through the tunnels. We ran frantically, trying to find a way out. I thought we were done for but suddenly, as quick as we had fallen into the hole, Matt ran head-first into a ladder. I knew there was a reason we always let him lead the way.
We climbed the ladder and pushed aside the manhole cover and peeked out on the surface, which we hadn’t seen in a week or more. It seemed like everything was okay, so we climbed out and looked around a little better. We were in a sleepy little suburb outside of the outbreak, we thought we were saved.
The townsfolk took us in and cleaned us up, gave us some food and clean water. I guess we were lulled into the serenity of the place, and we forgot all about our problems. We were back in civilization, and safe.
That night, as we were sleeping, I began feeling a sharp pain in my stomach. I was hungry. I had eaten not nearly an hour ago, so I wasn’t quite sure what to think. I laid back down and went to sleep. When I was once again in a deep sleep, I was awoken by a violent shake and a loud shout.
“Wake up, fag!” It was Scott’s voice. “We need to go to school…”