Today I wrote my morning pages, a page of my short story, and in between this with my free-writing group:
Edward had only been dead for a week when the whole world ended. He was tempted to tell Bill — this was his buddy, who he hung outside the compound gates with most every night — that he’d been a zombie before everybody else was doing it, before it became cool. But Edward knew the only thing worse than one of the shambling, flesh-eating undead was one who was also an annoying hipster. And so he kept his mouth shut.
It wasn’t like he’d been Patient Zero or anything, anyway. He knew that guy, and he was a dick.
But still, sometimes, it sort of bugged him. Like, he’d only just gotten the hang of the whole flesh-eating thing last Thursday, felt like he’d really gotten a handle on it as he was ripping off that accountant’s meaty forearm, and then suddenly the whole city was over-run with these glassy-eyed, blood-spattered doofuses gurgling things like “Arrrrggg, braaaiiinnss…†Like you were even going to find brains on any given day. Sure, that’s what zombies said in all those dumb old movies, but had any of these jackasses actually tried cracking open a human skull? Easier said than done, my friend, especially with your hand-to-eye coordination shot to hell and the only thought running through your own head the aching, unending hunger. Edward hadn’t had anybody to show him the ropes, had gone a whole week just trying to muddle his way through. He could have been picked off at any time. This was back when there was still an army, before they too had succumbed to the plague — not like now, when all you had to worry about were a few scattered militias, maybe some crack shot atop the compound wall. But these folks, this compound? You didn’t even have to worry about that much. Most of them would be lucky if they even knew which end to hold a gun, had just been lucky enough to barricade themselves in before the onslaught. That was why Bill was here, and hell, it’s why Edward was here, too. Easy pickings. But Edward was just old enough — or rather his condition was old enough — to remember when that hadn’t been true.
Kids these days.
And then there were all these dumb rumors about a cure. About some guy, from some village in China. It was all pretty vague. The guards from the compound talked — when they weren’t saying things like “die, zombie, die!†or firing blindly into the woods — but even they weren’t clear about the details. Some guy, some place. It was slim hope, but Edward supposed that’s all anybody had left. The guards said this guy had gotten through, been on one last planes into the U.S. before they grounded them all. Before the airports were overrun like everywhere else. And if that wasn’t crazy-talk enough, they said he’d gotten through because he’d made a cure, was here working with the government — some government, whatever government was left. He’d saved that village from infection — saved half of China, if you believed half of the talk — and now he was here. A saint in the city, walking among us.
Edward didn’t believe it. But it might be nice, the more that he thought about it, the more he mulled it over in his zombified head. A cure might be exactly what he needed. After all, a cure would get rid of a few of these brain-eating morons. And then he could get back to the work at hand. The rest of that accountant wasn’t going to last him through winter.
It just a writing kind of day.
I also watched some episodes of The Muppet Show and Supernatural, stopped by the public library, and did the Sunday crossword. Good times.
