Husk of a house - probably pre-built - maybe the blacken grit remains of my old house in Martins Ferry, Ohio. The more I think about it the more I care/then don’t care/then wish I had a real “hometown.”
It’s an epidemic. People are washing up on the hillside on cresting heapes of blood - the outline and the tide mark crusting over, creating a darker barrier in the grass. A sudden speedbump for corpses skidding onto the pavement, grey teeth grind like sidewalk chalk.
I am perched atop one of the higher beams of my house. There are no walls, no ceilings, nothing except who I am and what I am afraid of. I shake off cold hands, reminded of touching the seaweed and coral reef when my Dad and I had the “pure-luck” vacation in Oʻahu. I miss him.
I grab the ankles of man, jumping from a rafter. How did he get that high? I swing his body down through a floorboard with surprising strength - he cracks and breaks. Cracks and breaks. I am covered in him.
The setting changes and I am in my room here in Chicago. Seated behind me, my girlfriend, her sister, and her sister’s young 3-year-old son. Other survivors are there as well, and one comes into the room after using the hall rest room. The coast had been clear for the person to exit, but she did not shut the bedroom door behind her properly and a young zombie slides through the door and into the room. He does not go for any of us, but looks tirelessly beneath my dresser for something. He is whining and crying. Rag Clothes. It was an underground feeling, some odd sense of animalistic urgency. I grabbed him with my strongest arm around his neck and tugged him off the paneling, kicking into the air.
His skin was translucent and his sunken eyes black and flush against his brain. I saw it pulsating like a kick-drum behind the plastic forehead and his mouth clattered. His lower jaw, worn down to his molar, was smacking against my hand. I flung open the door and threw him overhand like a hatchet into the hallway - his body twisting then busting against the wall like a bright red paint can.
Slam. Lock. Re-lock. Look.
They were staring at me. I was staring at my wrist. There weren’t bite marks, but there were weak impressions like a pattern of reverse brail. A bite meant infection. Walking dead. Dead. But what was this?
I looked at her, she looked at her sister, the young boy was wailing, crying, and clamping his ears - trying to shove the memory of moments prior back again.
I remember from my dream, a distinct and sickening feeling. First, the overwhelming emotion was selfishness: I was not bitten. I will not turn into a zombie. I am a survivor like you. I promise. Then slowly, the bubbling thoughts of: What if I turn in seconds, and kill the people. I love them.
Silently, to no shouts or arguments, I unlatched the lock hammer, took a step out of the door, and waited in the dark. Waiting.
dʒʌst
