Shit.

Shit, shit.

Shit shit shit.

Fucking shit.

Oh my fucking god!

That was about the extent of my vocabulary when I first realized what had happened to my mother, and what had a pretty good chance of happening to me. They ripped her apart. Those maggot infested reanimated fucks tore her limbs from her body like they were supermen pulling apart string cheese. I mean, for Christ’s sake, how can the dead be so fucking strong? They’re fuckin’ dead!

Honestly, I wasn’t even sure they were reanimated. They just looked that way to me as I backpedaled down the sidewalk before turning to run like a motherfucker away from them. I’ve seen all the movies, all the end of the world shit. These don’t look anything like those rage infected people in 28 Days Later. No. They look more like the things in Dawn of the Dead, except these fuckers, it turns out, can run. Who the fuck knew?

So, I’m going to call them zombies, and until I can find a better term, that’s what they’ll be.

Fuck. I’m not even sure where they came from. Mom and I were just walking down the street, right about twilight, on our way to get a take-and-bake pizza, when we saw the first one about a block down the street. I thought he was one of the drunks that came out of Harvey’s Tavern down that way. He was listing pretty bad to the left as he walked toward us.

And then a couple more appeared from around the corner, and I said to my mom, “Do you think Harvey’s just emptied?”

“Why would it?” she asked. “That place never closes.”

We kept walking, thinking they were drunks, and that we would just walk past them. We only had another half block to go before we arrived at the pizza place. We thought we’d be fine.

That lasted all of about two minutes, until those fuckers finally noticed us and ran right at us.

I grabbed my mother’s arm and tried to pull her along with me, but she stumbled and fell to the ground. She tried to get up, and then one of those pieces of shit jumped out from the bushes beside us, grabbed hold of her arm, and yanked it right off.

I crapped my pants. The zombie turned and looked at me for a moment, and I could see into its skull through an empty eye socket. The other eye blinked in an apparent attempt to move its drooping eyelid out of the way.

“Shit!”

“Shit, shit!”

And all the rest that I told you up front, and then I turned and ran. Those fuckers may be superman strong and able to run, but they weren’t track stars, and they couldn’t fly.

I didn’t have to keep the tears back. They wouldn’t come at all. Don’t get me wrong. I loved my mom, but in that moment, with zombies bearing down on me and my shorts full of yesterday’s breakfast, I didn’t have time to think about how my mother had died, or that she was even dead.

I looked over my shoulder once, and the zombies had fallen off, returning to chow on my mom.

I ran back to my apartment, which my mom had been visiting. It’s only about three blocks away from the pizza place. I ran up the stairs, fumbled my keys out of my pocket, somehow managed to unlock the door, and jumped inside, locking the door behind me.

I grabbed the phone and dialed 911. I know, you’re asking why I didn’t just dial 911 on my cell as I was running. The answer is that I hate those fucking things. People always calling you, texting you, invading your life at inconvenient times. So I leave the one I have at home as often as I can get away with it. I have it for work reasons. When I don’t want to be called by my work, I leave it at home. It’s not like you can anticipate a zombie attack every fucking day.

Fucking 911 gave me a busy signal. “Fuck!”

Andrea, I thought. I’ll call Andrea. Her number gave me a busy signal, too. “What the fuck?”

I was freaked out before, but as I dialed numbers and got busy signals, my efforts grew more and more frantic until I eventually threw the phone across the room and smashed my beer bottle collection. “God fucking dammit!”

Think, think! I peeked out through the blinds and didn’t see anything. Of course, it had grown darker, and those things didn’t exactly carry flashlights or wear glow sticks.

I had time. Time to get cleaned up and change my pants.

What a fucking mess.

Once that was done and I’d tossed it all in the trash—I’m not cleaning that up—and tied off the trashbag, the whole fucking nightmare hit me like a punch in the chest. My mom, dead. Cause of death—zombies.

Fuck. That hurts. They pulled her apart. I don’t think there’s any chance she became one of them.

“What the hell do I do, now?” I asked no one in particular.

“You could try 911 again, dumbass,” I answered myself.

I looked over to where the hurled phone had tumbled through the beer bottles and wondered if there was any chance it had survived. Some of my favorite bottles hadn’t.

Nothing for it, though. I had to go check it out.

It was cracked, right along the earpiece, but I thought it should still work. I put it up to my ear, pressed the talk button, but it was dead. I threw it at a still standing pile of bottles and knocked them over, too.

Then I spotted my cell sitting on my desk next to the computer. I gave in, and decided I’d have to see if the piece of shit worked. I dialed 911, and again got a busy signal.

“Useless.” I almost tossed the cell, too, and thought better of it.

I tried Andrea again. No dice, only this time, instead of a busy signal, I got an automated message that the call couldn’t go through. Right about now, I found myself wishing I had a radio or a TV, but who has those anymore? I watch all the shows I want for free online.

I must not have been thinking straight. In my panic, I’d reverted to what I’d grown up with.

I sat down at my computer and waited the three seconds for it to resume from sleep mode. I love solid state disk drives. So much speed. When it came up, I checked CNN first thing, in case maybe the zombie apocalypse was upon us. I don’t know why I even bothered. They didn’t even have an alert up or anything. Either it wasn’t national, or they were ass slow as always, or they’d all been eaten. I voted for number two.

And then Twitter chimed. And chimed again. I brought it up, and damn if Twitter hadn’t just blown up. Everyone was talking about zombies. Fuck. Thank God for the internet.

I started typing.

The power went out. Black as shit.

I peeked out the window through the blinds to see if the building across the street had power, but their place was dark, too. At least the outage wasn’t local. I breathed a sigh of relief as I decided that the zombies hadn’t followed me home.

But then I saw some movement in the parking lot, a shadow or something. In the dark, I didn’t know where the light came from to give me that glimpse, but I didn’t care. One of those fucking things was in my parking lot.

Now, I guess I should describe my apartment. It’s not one of those huge apartment complexes that you see all over the place. No, it’s a late sixties rambler that the owner decided to convert into apartments. The place is a dive, but the neighbors are cool most of the time. I don’t have to worry about blasting music or drinking and getting too loud, because they’re doing it all the time themselves, when they’re not high on pot.

I stumbled back to my computer and reached for the tiny LED flashlight I kept there. It wouldn’t give off a lot of light, but it would help me find something to use against those things. I had no illusion that I would survive the night in this place if I didn’t take steps. It’s not like the place had bullet proof glass for windows and a bank vault door in the entryway.

“Fuck you!” I heard through my wall. My neighbor, Danny.

He followed it up with a couple of shots from his gun, loud explosions, a thump against the wall.

My heart raced.

“Danny!” I yelled through the wall. “You all right?”

“Fuuuck!” Another shot, this one zinged past my ear.

No, Danny wasn’t all right, and he had the only gun in the place.

I flipped my flashlight on and looked around my place while the yelling and thumping continued next door.

Nothing. Broken beer bottles wouldn’t do a thing against those creatures. I didn’t own any weapons, or even many tools beyond the screwdrivers I used to work on my computers. What I wouldn’t give for a BFG.

Then I shined the light into the corner, and I saw two of those metal rails that you screw to the wall to hold up bookshelves.

“Better than nothing.”

I grabbed one of them, searched for my car keys in my pocket until I realized that they were in the pocket of the pants I’d soiled. Getting them out of that bag wasn’t pleasant.

The noise next door stopped.

“Time to go,” I said in a whisper. After I said it, I wished I’d kept my mouth shut. I had no idea if these things tracked by sight or smell or sound, and I knew one had to be next door.

And, since I hadn’t heard anything else from Danny, I had to assume he was dead, too. At that moment, I realized that my other neighbor’s dogs, a pair of rottweilers, should have been barking their heads off, but they were silent. If I stayed any longer, I’d be zombie food.

I peeked out the window again and didn’t see anything move. Maybe it was still eating Danny. I hoped there was only the one.

I stuck the flashlight in my pocket, put the bookshelf rail in one hand, my car keys in the other. I turned the knob, then pulled the door open just a touch so I could look through the crack. Nothing. I let out a sigh of relief. I’d half expected one of the maggot-ridden to be standing right on the step.

I started to step out when I heard glass shatter behind me.

Something smashed through my front window. Something. A fucking zombie smashed through my window. It tripped itself up on the obsolete CD rack I’d left there, and fell head first into the open crappy-pants bag.

I screamed, and then ran out the door.

I could see it through the window, now that it was inside, and I was outside. It was just starting to stand.

How can I see? I looked up. Starlight. I hadn’t seen starlight in months. The power was out fucking everywhere.

I ran for my car, a beat up old piece of shit Honda Civic. When I got to its door, I fumbled the keys to the ground in my haste to get the door unlocked. The thought that ran through my head? God dammit this kind of shit is only fucking supposed to happen in the movies!

I looked back into my apartment and saw that the zombie—I’ll call him Joe because I fucking hate the name Joe—had righted himself and had turned to come back through the now glassless window.

“Fuck!”

That’s what Danny said right before he died, I thought.

I bent down and felt around the ground for my keys with my free hand while I kept my eye on Joe. Gravel, gravel. A stick. Where the fuck are my keys?

Joe’s left leg stepped out of my apartment and into the the flowerbed full of weeds underneath it.

I reached farther under the car, and my fingers found a piece of metal. The keyring. I hooked it with my index finger and pulled it out.

I manipulated the keys with my fingers, while keeping my eyes on Joe, until I found the plastic shell of my car key. I’d always hated the plastic shells they stuck on the keys, but if anyone had asked me at that moment, I would have sung the praises of plastic.

I jammed the key in the door as Joe cleared the window sill and started an off center jog toward me.

I gave up on the key for the moment and prepared to take on Joe. I couldn’t let him get near me or he’d rip me apart, so I held that steel rail out in front of me, pointed straight at the fucker.

According to most of the movies, you kill a zombie with a blow to the head. “Is that how you die, Joe?” I asked. Of course, there was that other movie series where you had to cremate them or something. If I had to do that, I was fucked. Of course, I remembered that didn’t turn out so well, either.

I decided, in the split second I had, to try for the head.

As Joe drew close to me, I could hear him grunting with the effort of movement.

I stabbed out with the rail, aiming where I thought his head would be.

Fuck! The rail stopped dead. I’d hit Joe in the head, but struck bone. Joe slowed for a moment, giving me a chance.

I backed up, ran around the car to try to give myself a little more time.

Joe followed me.

“Come on, you fucker!” I yelled at him.

As Joe followed me around the back of the car to the passenger side, I moved toward the front of the car and around it, until I found myself at the driver side door again.

Unfortunately, Joe didn’t follow my plan. He started climbing over the car. A hand broke through the passenger window, and glass rained all over the seat within. Joe got a foot up, and then levered himself up on the roof, with his head toward me, a perfect target.

I jammed the end of the rail at his face over the roof of the car. This time, I struck paydirt—or pay-brains. The rail slipped right into Joe’s eye-socket.

Joe screamed a scream that I would have thought might come from a dying cat or something. It wasn’t human. And then Joe went limp on the roof of my car.

“Fucker! Fuck you!” I yelled.

I pulled the key from the car door, got in, and started the car.

As soon as the engine turned over, I put the piece of crap into reverse and hit the gas.

Joe slid down the window and off the hood, leaving streaks of some dark goo as he went. I had left the bookshelf rail embedded in his head, and it scraped my hood as it went with Joe. For a brief moment, I thought about retrieving it, but I decided Joe could keep it. I didn’t want zombie goo on my seats.

I stopped the car, put it in drive, spun the wheel, and punched the gas.

A couple quick bumps as the wheels rolled over Joe’s dead body, and I found myself on the road, unsure of my destination.

I missed my mom, already.