“Easy.”
“And then I need you to take down that fuckin’ samurai sword and hunt some fuckin’ zombies with me.”
“Done.”
Van crossed back into his bedroom to put on some warm clothes. Zombie hunting was a young man’s sport. Van was pushing 35, so he didn’t know how his body would respond. He had heard all of the reports on the news about wannabe vigilantes being found dead around town. One had to assume that for every three zombies that a hunter killed, one vigilante met the same fate as those he hunted. That’s why Van thought zombie hunters were fuckin’ crazy.
And what’s more, Van always had a ‘live, let live’ policy with zombies. A zombie never accused him of fucking like an epileptic being tased - it was all of his girlfriends that had done that. Yet Van wasn’t getting dressed in the middle of the night to kill any of them.
No, Van was putting on his warm clothes to go out and back up a man who was going to use a samurai sword to cut off the head of another living creature. Sure the zombie probably deserved to die, but it still constituted a ‘whoa,-did-that-chick-just-stick-her-finger-in-my-ass’ sort of night.
“So what am I supposed to do?” Van said as he walked down the hallway to the living room.
He entered just in time to see Kofi putting his cell phone back into his pocket. Van thought that it was unusual that Kofi would be making a call at this time, but he let it go. “I mean I follow you with a sword and check whoever you kill to make sure that they’re dead or something?”
“Do you want to be the hook or the bait?” Kofi said in a calm, higher voice.
“What’s that?”
“The bait is the one that lures them there. The hook is what traps them,” Kofi explained.
“I don’t want to be the fuckin’ bait,” Van said, imaging the hunting going wrong.
“Ok, then we’re goin’ to the park. You’re gonna set yourself up in the shadows of a tree. I’m gonna walk in looking drunk. And then when a zombie gets between you and me, we both turn around and slay his fuckin’ ass. Ya got it?”
“Yeah.”
Van thought the plan was simple enough. All he had to do was keep the zombie pinned while Kofi killed it. And once that was done, he could come back home and never have to think about it again.
The walk to the park was quick and quiet. Van barely had the time to think about why Kofi had chosen this night. He didn’t have the time to consider why it was that Kofi showed up at 3 o’clock in the morning asking him to do this thing. Van even ignored the fact that something wasn’t right about his friend. And when that thought did pop into his consciousness, Van felt bad remembering that this was the friend that had once pushed a man out of a window to protect him. Van had long since decided that that act 15 years earlier had earned his eternal trust.
When both approached the park Kofi turned to Van. “Ok, I want you to hide over there next to that tree.” Kofi pointed to one of the thick trees that was 25 feet away from a picnic bench. “I want you to wait there. I’m gonna circle around and come into the park through the clearing. That way if there is a zombie following me I’ll see ‘em.
“If I make it to the bench I will sit down like I’m drunk and pretend to fall asleep. Now, this is very important, you have to keep your eyes open. If some zombie fuckin’ approaches me, you have to tell me.” Kofi looked up into Van’s eyes. “You hear me? You have to tell me! Otherwise I’m gonna get my fuckin’ brains eaten. You hear me?” Kofi said poking Van in the chest.
“Yeah I got it. I have your back,” Van replied, a little annoyed.
Kofi gave Van a long look. “Good. And remember, if you can hear the breathing, you’re already dead.”
Van always found that phrase creepy. What exactly did a zombie’s breath sound like? He had never been close enough to one to hear it breath. At least, as far as he knew he had never gotten that close to one. Van knew that he could never be sure of that because some zombies could easily be mistaken for people. The woman at the checkout stand at the food store could be a zombie. Or it could be the cook making your dinner at the restaurant. ‘That is the problem with zombies’, Van decided. ‘They don’t all carry the mark.’
Van watched as Kofi walked further down the sidewalk. And when Kofi hit the first cross street Kofi swayed back and forth like he was drunk.
Van took that moment to cross the main street to the park. He was careful to look around to see if anyone was watching him. As far as he could tell, not only was the street empty, but the park was too. Van decided that this was going to be a long night, and with any luck Kofi would give up before too long and Van could go home and get at least an hour more of sleep before work in the morning.
Van got behind the tree and squatted down in the shadows. He watched as Kofi made his way around the outside of the park and entered through the clearing. It was then that Van’s ignored questions surfaced. ‘Why had Kofi chosen tonight?’ Van thought. ‘And why after such a long absence?’
Van stood up as Kofi entered the shadows and plopped himself down on the bench. Kofi carried his sword wrapped in a blanket that was pretty much shaped like a sword so a zombie would have to be a fool to approach him. Van thought that this scenario had ‘zombie trap’ written all over it.
Van took another look around at the park. It was still empty. Relaxed, Van leaned back and turned his attention to the last night he had seen either of his best friends.
He still couldn’t remember much of the party, but he did remember arriving for the party at their friend Grant’s house. Grant had a monstrous 4 leveled house on the valley side of the Hollywood Hills. Kofi and Van always marveled at Grant’s luxuries because Grant was a dentist and neither of them could understood how a dentist could make so much money.
After a few handshakes outside Van remembered entering the house and seeing Kieran. Kieran then introduced Kofi and him to the two girls that he had brought for them. And Van remembered wondering why Kieran hadn’t brought a girl for himself.
After that Van remembered getting more wasted and being all over the girl. The only memory that followed was the one Van had of sneaking out of one of Grant’s bedrooms the next morning. Van remembered leaving the girl completely covered and asleep. He did his best not to wake the girl because, although lying to the girl about calling her later was an accepted part of the game, it was easier to just sneak out and never see her again.
It wasn’t until he got home that Van emptied his pockets and found her card. Her card said that she was a clothing designer for a women’s clothing line that he recognized. Kieran had hooked him up with a quality girl.
‘Too bad it ended up being a fuck n’ dump,’ Van thought.
Staring at the card, he wished that Kieran had introduced the two before Van had decided that he would get drunk and fuck the closest thing with a pulse. She might have had something interesting to say otherwise.
Back at the park, Van looked back up at Kofi, who had not moved from his position at the picnic table. He was still leaning to the side with his arms and head on the wood.
Van considered how vulnerable Kofi looked. ‘If I wasn’t standing guard,’ Van thought, ‘anyone could walk right up to him and do whatever they wanted.’ Kofi looked like a little Greek gingerbread man, Van thought. And if it wasn’t for all the hair, anyone would want to gobble him up. It was then that Van made a move to approach Kofi. But just as Van pulled himself away from the tree, a strange thing happened: the wind picked up.
The sound of the wind through the trees was haunting. It sounded like the wind had gotten trapped in the branches and was fighting its way out. The sound sent a chill down Van’s spine. And the chill didn’t happen just once, it happened multiple times.
‘No,’ Van thought. ‘It’s not the wind. What does that sound like?’ Van wondered.
At once it hit him. It hit him like a bucket of ice water dumped over his naked skin. Van froze as the realization finally fought into his consciousness. It was the sound of breathing. It wa
s the sound of death.
In that instant Van decided that he wasn’t going to go out quietly. Van whipped his body around and found himself staring into a pair of dark circled eyes. It was a zombie, and Van was caught, ensnared in the silence that came after the zombie’s last breath.
The zombie lurched forward.
*****
Chapter 3
Bloody Infection
The first reported case of zombie-ism occurred in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil. It is believed that a Brazilian missionary took an expedition into the rainforest and was bitten by something like a fly squirrel. There were no symptoms initially so physicians gave him a fresh round of rabies shots and thought it would be more than enough.
After 4 years the missionary showed up in a hospital in Rio with a hollowed-out face and the black circles under his eyes that are now so closely associated with zombie-ism. He had extreme muscle and joint pains and curving and hardening of bones. And more than those physical symptoms, he had basically lost his mind. The doctors thought it could be a form of rabies which they hadn’t identified and started a new round of treatments. The treatments didn’t work and eventually he died.
Parts of the account, however, are more rumor than fact. It is said that during treatment doctors were able to bring the priest back to a relative sanity and ask him about what he had been experiencing. He described bouts of uncontrollable cravings for the taste of human brains. He targeted tourists because he knew he had to avoid people from his parish and neighborhood to diminish the likelihood of discovery.
None of the attacks were fatal, and some of the tourists reported the incident locally; or to their embassy. But time and again the response amounted to ‘Hey – that’s Rio!’ Most officials assumed it was really a case of too much alcohol or some sort of sex vacation gone wrong. The tourists taken seriously were tested for all of the infections that are usually transmitted when a human bites another person. The tests always came back clean. The victims were always alive. What more could anyone do?
Soon, patients like the priest started to show up in hospitals around the world. Cities in Europe and the United States were the first to see attacks related to the outbreak. A year later, incidents started to occur in Asia and Africa. The first year there were 2,000 attacks reported in the US. Everyone knew that number was low. Attacks of all kinds have always been underreported because of embarrassment, fear of retaliation or – in this case - because the victim was always labeled a possible health threat when they did. No one wanted to live their life with such a fear inducing stigma.
But even with the threat of being labeled, the number of reported zombie attacks jumped to 4,500 the next year. The year after that it jumped to 15,000; a year later 70,000. Two years ago, the last year reliable records could be kept, there were over 12,000 attacks reported in Los Angeles County alone. And a third of those occurred in Silverlake - the small, artistic middle income community northwest of downtown L.A.
Silverlake was an obvious place for zombies to hide because it was so easy for someone who showed physical signs of the virus to blend into the community. Sunken eyes, a disregard for hygiene, mismatched clothing; these were all signs of virility in Silverlake. In Silverlake, this was referred to as zombie chic.
The hipster artist wannabes of Silverlake prided themselves on how far outside of the mainstream they were. They were zombie chic before the first zombie left Brazil. And there was no way that the apathetically trendy Silverlake residence were about to relinquish their I-don’t-care-what-you-think-about-me outsider coolness to another group just because that other group had an alternative lifestyle that on the surface seemed even more apathetic than their own. That attitude made Silverlake the best place for zombies who were in the later stages of the disease to blend in.
All of the death and dying that hung in the air in Silverlake though, made the community a disturbingly creepy place to be. But seeing the lemonade from this lemon, the non-infected residence, embraced the creepiness factor. In fact, in a stroke of apathetic brilliance, a Silverlake resident wrote an Op Ed piece in the L.A Weekly referring to it as “creepy chic”. The phrase stuck and the community was once again considered the most apathetically trendy place to be if you where a hipster and artist wannabe.
There were those, however, who disagreed with this seeming cultural acceptance of zombie-ism. You didn’t have to be a senior researcher at the WHO to see the writing on the wall - this was indeed a pandemic. Infections were increasing exponentially and there wasn’t even the possibility of a cure on the horizon. That meant that in 5 or 10 years there could be more infected people than there were healthy people. So the big question remained: ‘What do we do about it?’
The life cycle of the virus was anywhere from a few months to about 5 years depending on how healthy the victims were before they were infected. Recreational drug use quickened the appearance of the infection as did obesity. Generally healthy people didn’t see any physical symptoms for 3 years and the yoga-practicing, vitamin-popping meditators could last for the better part of 5 years. But there was yet to be a case reported that didn’t involve the infected person dying permanently. Yet there was still no test for zombie-ism; there was no cure for zombie-ism; and depending on the general health of the victim, he could go on to live 4 or 5 healthy years.
There was a catch though. Even though the physical symptoms didn’t kick in for a few months or years, the cravings started almost immediately. The US government released reports that the initial cravings weren’t any stronger than that of a crack addict or even a cigarette smoker. But as time went on, it wasn’t so much that the cravings increased as much as resistance to those cravings wore down. And psychological studies showed that once an infected person satisfied the craving, subsequent attacks were sure to follow.
The fact remained, however, that zombies had the potential to be law abiding members of society. The legal questions became heated. Could citizens be detained (and eventually executed) because of their predisposition to commit a crime? Should the infected have full rights in spite of their contagion? On an individual level, should a woman who becomes infected through no fault of her own be allowed to get married even though the intimacy of marriage dramatically increased the chances of spreading this pandemic level infection?
In the US, the legal aspect of the zombie problem was handled at the state level. The attitudes in Los Angeles and New York were very different from the Midwest and the South. In Merkel, Texas, the welcome sign that read ‘Don’t Let the Sun Set on Your Brown Skin In This Town’ was replaced by ‘Don’t Let the Sun Set on Your Zombie Skin in This Town.’ So zombie-ism was recognized to have one societal benefit: It did improve race relations.
But on the other hand, when a person was outed as being a zombie the backlash was horrible. Zombie-ism reinvigorated the Klu-Klux-Kan in many areas. Corpses in various stages of the infection were once found lining the streets of a Selma, Alabama. And nobody who shot someone suspected of being a zombie could ever be convicted in a Southern court.
There was even a case where a man, Billy-Jo Blurr, was killed as a suspected zombie, yet the defendant, Jason “Bubba” Whyley, could produce no evidence of the victim’s purported infection. But in the closing argument the defense labeled the incident as a clear-cut case of “zombie panic” and the shooter was acquitted. After the trial, it was revealed that the victim was sleeping with the Bubba Whyley’s wife. But it was too late - the term “zombie panic” had become a part of American vernacular.
Zombie panic was considered a kind of crime of passion. Soon, there were hundreds of cases of zombie panic that were all settled in the defendant’s favor. After a while all a shooter or vigilante had to do was mention the phrase ‘zombie panic’ and they wouldn’t even be cited for a traffic violation.
That was when the federal government stepped in. The President issued an executive order stating that ‘zombie panic’ could no longer be used as a ‘get out of jail free’ card; and that police should make
arrests following an assault or murder as usual – no matter the metabolic status of the victim.
That was when the Coalition for the Rights of Ascended Humans was formed. C.R.A.H.’s stated goal was ‘the species purity of the American people’, but everyone knew that it was just a legal front for the destruction of zombies everywhere. C.R.A.H. took the president’s executive order about zombie killers to the Supreme Court and won under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. There was no precedent for their decision, so this was a clear case of conservative activist judges shaping the country into their own image.
As the zombie panic cases again skyrocketed, the President’s team weighed their options for dealing with C.R.A.H. which had become a political movement. C.R.A.H. was gaining hundreds of members by the day, and it became clear to anyone watching that they had their sights on the White House. And unless the President came up with a viable plan to deal with the zombie pandemic, C.R.A.H. would soon lead the free world.
*****
Chapter 4
Samurai Death
The rhythmic pattern of zombie breath was said to be hypnotic. The rapid fire in and out was said to be able to stun its victim. In the nighttime shadows of the park the breath had stunned Van, but it had only stunned him for a second. Without thinking he got a tighter grip on his sword, peeled himself off of the tree’s trunk, and spun into a slash that caught the zombie across the chest.
The zombie paused and stared back at him. Within the shadows of the trees the only thing that Van could see was the zombie’s shoulder length golden brown hair. Even in the shadows he could tell that this wasn’t a homeless zombie. This zombie was gym fit, which made it even more terrifying. The last thing he ever wanted to meet in a dark alley was a zombie that ran 5 miles a day. Especially since Van could get winded jacking off. Sometimes he would get so tired while pleasuring himself that he would just give up and go back to his desk at office. But he could not afford to lose interest tonight.
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