Here's the text of my story. Dang, maybe I should have stuck with Open Office? I went to Kinkos to print my story once when I ran out of ink, and their computers had trouble reading the file, and I thought- "maybe everyone uses Works, instead?"
Naked Zombie Salma Hayek and Other Musings
by
Richard Trevino
"We hunt people the same way a pride of vicious lions would cull a sick wildebeest out of the rest of the herd. Actually, more like a pack of slow, slightly retarded hunting dogs after a cape buffalo that's armed itself with an AK-47 assault rifle. It can be done, but it all comes down to the numbers. In small groups or alone, we're as weak as ants separated from the ant pile. But get enough of us together, and we'll strip a jungle to the roots. There must have been 100,000 of us that came upon the San Antonio safe zone at Camp Bullis. They had cleared fields of fire, pre-sited artillery, even called in napalm air strikes. But they were like all the rest, running out of nerve and ammo faster than we could be killed."
"Yeah, most zombies can talk. We just have no real desire to do so. That was the effect of the zombie plague. All human desires-- to talk, of love, hatred, fear, shame. The sickness took all those things away. No desire of any sort except the need to eat human flesh. Most living folk aren't in a talking mood when they see us, but ask us a question, like you're doing now, and we'll talk your ears off. The higher realms of thought remain. We've just lost all desire to act upon those thoughts. Like these shackles digging into my skin? Hurts like hell. But I wouldn't lift a finger to do anything about it even if I could. Otherwise, except for being dead and all, we're really no different from the living. No different, that is, until we are overtaken by what we call… the hunger. And then, we lose all reason until satiated with the flesh of the living."
"Yep. Desire for sex, too. I mean, I KNOW when a woman is smoking hot, I'm just not gonna do anything more than stare at her all stupefied, which I guess is no different than when I was one of the so-called living. Like the other day when naked zombie Salma Hayek showed up in our horde? Yep. Naked zombie Salma Hayek. We all just stood around staring, not caring enough to reach out and touch her, she not caring enough to cover her nakedness. When all of sudden, some good ol' boy from one of the nearby fortified camps showed up amongst us, killing zombies to the left and right with a katana sword before throwing naked zombie Salma Hayek over his shoulder and running for home! He even put a football helmet over her head so she wouldn't get all bitey on him. Well, I guess some people go crazy with loneliness when the world's ended and they've been holed up alone in their shelter for awhile. Who knows, maybe he cleaned her up and treated her all decent-like. And maybe she didn't kill and eat him."
"Who was I before the plague? I was an okay sorta guy, I think. Now, I was stuck in a dead end call center job, but had all sorts of hobbies and interests in my spare time. Stuff like surfing the internets, brewing my own beer at home, keeping up with my favorite TV shows, that kinda thing. No, I wasn't some brain-dead stoner with no social skills. I only used that stuff at parties… you know, maybe once or twice or a few times a week. That sorta thing did a lot to calm my nerves when everything went to hell. The evacuation orders came for everyone to head north, but I figured my stash and my home-made beer would see me through it all. I had enough water from when I filled the bath tub, but my packs of ramen noodles lasted only about one week. I starved with nothing for several days before I was desperate enough to go look for more food."
"When I snuck out of my apartment, there wasn't another person in sight, zombie or otherwise. I checked all the abandoned cars that clogged Bandera Road for any leftover food, and thought I was being careful about it. I mean, who woulda thought that a zombie would be hiding in a car! But a small zombie child had been squirreled away under some blankets in the back seat of a Tahoe. I think my hand must have passed right in front of its mouth as I was feeling around for anything that might be useful, because he just barely nicked me."
"What's it like to be bitten by a zombie? It's like when the slow kid in kindergarten sunk his teeth into you for taking one of his crayons. Just enough to break the skin. Didn't even draw blood. But I knew I was finished, that I would be dead within hours. I staggered away from the car and made it a few blocks before sitting down on the side of the road in shock, too stunned to even walk back home or kill myself. How would I have done it anyway? Bludgeon myself with the table leg that I was carrying around for self-protection?"
"Hours later, I had my last meal as a living person-- a bar of chocolate that I found on the side of the road. And then I felt it, death coming for me. Exhaustion, as if I'd been awake for days. When I fell backward onto the street and just lay there, staring up at the sky, I realized I couldn't move. A form lay over me, reeking of the sewer. It was that zombie boy from the Tahoe. It sat next to me, took my arm with its hands, and ripped a hunk of flesh, vein, and tendon from my wrist with its mouth. I felt nothing, and then closed my eyes."
"And when I opened my eyes again, there was hunger. Hunger as I'd never known."
"What's it like being one of the undead? Well, let me tell you. I LOVE IT! I mean, eating human flesh and all is not right. Okay, okay. I get it. But now, I get to do what I want all day. Nobody tells me what to do. And the best part of it is? We're all finally equal! Nobody acts all uppity 'cuz, quote unquote, I don't dress right, or have a previous misdemeanor offense for possession. All have been laid low, no disadvantages based on background, race, appearance, or intelligence. And! Now each guy has as much chance with the girls as anyone else! Well yeah, that chance is zero, but hey, that's democracy for you."
"Now I know I have the zombie… look. But that's not MY fault. I guess the sickness attacks the nervous system, making the victim look like a pathetic loser that's given up on his appearance, unable to move at anything faster than a shamble. It also left us unable to do anything more complex with out hands than grab an arm or a leg. Hell, even monkeys can use tools, we can't."
"Like the other day when I noticed an old ladder that had been left against a wall near one of the armed camps of the living. I knew a ladder would help me get at those tasty people, if only I could get it moved to where it might be useful. But of course my hands were useless except to grab and pull. I tried a sort of shuffling, quick-walk toward the ladder, arms outstretched in hopes that my momentum would get the thing pushed to where I needed it to go. Next thing I knew, my arms were entangled within the rungs and I began trying to climb. Only problem was, I was on the wrong side for climbing. Now, it might be possible for someone to climb a ladder that‘s leaning toward them, but that person's probably not one of the living dead."
"My old dead friend Dee was watching my struggles with open-mouthed fascination and seemed to sense my intentions with the ladder. He comes shuffling over, trying to push it, and next thing you know the whole contraption just tilted over right onto his friend J.W.. The amazing part is, both legs of the ladder hit J.W. square on the shoulders, his head passing between two of the rungs without so much as a scratch! Dee finally regained consciousness and sat up, but in doing so he put HIS head between the rungs!"
"Well, at least they had that ladder balanced on their shoulders, and we thought now maybe we could get somewhere. But they seemed to lack for strategic thinking. Well actually, maybe for any kind of thinking. One would spin to the left, the other to the right, doing complete pinwheels all over the lawn of that house. One would push, the other would simply push back. They tried clawing at the ladder with their hands to push it over their heads, but had difficulty in the coordination."
"They spent most of the afternoon stuck together that way, spinning around and deadlocked until finally both were on their knees from exhaustion. I think one of the living holed up in the house had been watching the whole sorry mess for awhile and finally just became sick of it all . Some dude walked right out the front gate, strolled over to Dee and J.W., and shot them both in the head before anybody could do anything about it. He didn't even pay the rest of us any attention but just ran for home!"
"I guess all that's left of America are those armed, fortified camps. What is it with you people? I mean, a great catastrophe was supposed to draw everyone together, not pull them apart. The center did not hold, did it? HA! Some people were all too happy to begin shooting their fellow Americans, weren't they. Wandering this wasteland, I see now that division is based as much on pre-plague neighborhood as it is on race or class. I guess that it shouldn't have come as a surprise that some used the end of the world to settle old scores. My own neighbor was shot by the guy living in the apartment above him, just because he'd once called the cops on the guy for blaring music at 2 am. No one came to do justice for that poor man. The body was left to rot in the sun and soon attracted a small swarm of flies, vultures, and the living dead."
"What's it like to eat human flesh? How do you think a zombie is gonna answer that? IT‘S GREAT! Human flesh tastes like-- no, not that-- like pork. It's like the best Christmas ham you've ever sunk your teeth into, or a nice pulled pork sandwich that's been covered with a peppery sauce and served on toasted buns. The hunger comes on you, and whatever reason that you have left is lost, leaving only the need to feed. And only a bit of human flesh is enough to satisfy that hunger. Thank god for that, 'cuz have you ever seen a horde of two dozen zombies trying to portion out some guy they just killed? I mean, you're lucky to even get a scrap, or a coil of intestines. But a few swallows of human flesh, and the hunger is gone. Thought returns. And there's nothing left to do but savor the meat of the just slaughtered prey."
"Am I evil? Well, I don't FEEL evil? But guilty? Yeah, I feel bad sometimes. It gets especially hard when you've cornered an old friend who's still alive. I mean, you know you shouldn't eat him and stuff, like maybe for old times' sake. If I could have stopped myself, I would've. And believe me, I thought long and hard about how wrong it was while I was cracking open his bones to get at the marrow. Some of us feel more guilty than others, I suppose. Like this one dead gal I hung around with. Every day she would stand on an overpass above Interstate10, looking down like she was gonna jump. But since all human desire, even to kill oneself, had been taken from her, I guess she couldn't bring herself to do it. After about a week of her standing there, I shambled over, maybe to give her a few kind words and such-like. Next thing I knew, my hands shot out and pushed her over the side! Yeah, she went head first onto a tangle of burned out cars on the highway below with a sickening, wet thunk. When you think about it, I guess I was doing her a favor."
"Cold? The blistering Texas heat? Pain? We're affected by none of that. Nothing affects us but the old shot to the head. We have no fears, but I worry sometimes that you people will take us out one day. If ya'll knew better, you'd attack us in small, fast moving groups to get us all confused and going every which way, so that one horde of the undead couldn't join with another to make a zombie swarm. That you allowed us to come together into armies of the dead was the reason for your downfall."
"And oh, the glory of the swarm. The all consuming anonymity. The seething, shambling mass moving with one thought, one motion. It was like that during the final battle for San Antonio. The banshee moan of the undead drew us toward the living like the howl of wolves before the hunt. In hordes we came together, becoming like a flooded river that had jumped its banks and carried all before it. They called air strikes down upon us when we were still miles away, slamming the ground like the hand of god and cutting swaths of napalm through our ranks. But still we came. Maybe all of the undead of the lower Hill Country, maybe 100,000 in number, ascending toward the safe zone at Camp Bullis."
"From within the middle of the swarm I could see nothing of the point of attack but the bloom of artillery strikes that marked our front line. The noise became deafening-- a crescendo of screaming jet engines, the jackhammer beat of automatic cannons, and the moaning, screeching battle cry of the undead. The living had strung a series of tank traps around their base, extra wide and deep trenches that were meant to break up our attack. Those of us at the front tumbled into those man-made ditches like water flooding a dry riverbed. Within moments, the gap became filled with the broken, writhing bodies of the undead, and the swarm shambled over the ditch upon the backs of their brothers."
"Those of us at the front were being consumed as if by a threshing machine. Those in the rear pushed forward without hesitation to take their place. Soon, we were forced to crawl over the heaps of the undead that had fallen within yards of the enemy position. And all of a sudden, we had made it, had come to within arms reach of our tormentors."
"The enemy wavered, some of them edging backward as they continued to fire their M-4 carbines, others turning to run, abandoning their overheated .50 calibers. An old M-60 tank, salvaged from some National Guard base and followed by a few armored tractors, charged out from the compound and into the swarm, leaving a sticky, blood-red smear of crushed zombies in their wakes. But they were too few in number to turn the tide. Discipline might have saved the defenders at this point, maybe had they retreated before we got to killing range. But their second line could only see the scrum of the living and undead before them, and did the moral thing that doomed them all-- withheld their fire for fear of hitting their comrades."
"And then they broke, scattering over the hills and running to save their lives. Some of the living bunched together, like Custer surrounded by Indians. Pairs could be seen pointing guns at each other as if they had agreed before the attack to kill themselves should they fail in battle. Several even dropped to their knees in prayer. But it availed them nothing; even the righteous were consumed."
"You asked me earlier if I was evil. Well, I felt no ill-will toward anyone in that camp. I wasn't driven by hate to do what I did to them. Yes, I'm a killer of women and children, the innocent. But we eat the living only 'cuz that's what we do. Can I be blamed for something that's beyond my control? I'm no more responsible for becoming a zombie than someone who caught and spread the flu bug. Now, did you mean to ask if I was evil for having no care or remorse for the consequences of my actions? Evil for being the sad waste of a human being who lives from day to day in a pathetic and comfortable stupor? Well, I gotta tell you-- I wasn't that much different when I was alive."
"I think I'm a better person now that all the baggage of my life has been swept away. Hell, maybe a lot of us were hoping for an end to it all. I mean, why else were all those stupid zombie and disaster movies so popular. Maybe we all wanted someone or something to level the playing field, to see everything swept away in hopes of starting again in a new world, a new Eden, where even the lowest could be heroes."
"I hated walking to that soul-crushing, call center job of mine where I would be a mindless drone for eight hours at a stretch. But I did it. Every day, without complaint, as if maybe that's all I ever really wanted out of life. Unthinking. Uncaring. Unwilling to lift myself up. I suppose being a drone was just something that had to be done to pay the bills. But looking back now, I have to admit-- maybe I was already dead."
