Only Dead on the Inside

by James Breakwell

  Kids may or may not believe they are poultry.

  Walkie-Talkies

  You can communicate with kids out of visual range to make sure they come back.

  Kids and husbands will play with them and forget why they left home in the first place.

  Matching T-shirts

  If your kids get separated, other survivors will know they belong to you.

  Kids will be so ashamed they’ll wander away on purpose.

  ALL ABOARD

  When it comes to lugging small children around, nothing beats a piggyback ride. By keeping your offspring directly on top of you, you’ll minimize their chances to get themselves killed. They won’t make it easy for you. Backpackers know that after a few miles even a light load feels heavy. This is doubly true when the load wiggles and whines the whole time. The hardest part will be not dropping them on purpose.

  The ideal piggyback rider is big enough to support some of their own weight without being so big you can’t hold them up. Make sure they stick out their arms as far as they can. Otherwise they’ll end up bear-hugging your neck, which is a good way to suddenly black out. If you’re in the process of training your kids to do jujitsu, that rear naked choke is a plus. But if there’s a pack of zombies pursuing you, falling to the floor unconscious is a little inconvenient.

  As hard as piggyback rides are, they’re still better than carrying children in your arms. Kids are heavy. A toddler who doesn’t want to be lifted weighs as much as lead and is just as deadly. Prolonged exposure to either one will make your hair fall out. Toddlers will exhaust your arms or back, but letting kids of that size stand on their own is out of the question. They walk so slowly they practically move backward. The only exception is if they’re doing something they’re not supposed to. Then they’re blurs of light that break the sound barrier.

  If a situation deteriorates and you can’t carry a small child any farther, stash them someplace secure while you stand and fight the pursuing horde. The goal is to neutralize just enough zombies to buy you a little space before you start running again. Killing a monster or two and getting a quick breather could save your life, not because the zombies will no longer be able to bite you, but because you need the rest to avoid a heart attack. Like many parents, I’m horribly out of shape. Kids are the best excuse for not going to the gym. It’s the main reason I had them.

  To stash your young children, look for a location where you can temporarily trap them to prevent them from running away. You won’t come across many fully assembled playpens in the apocalypse, so you’ll have to improvise. The best solution in a pinch is a park trash can. They’re too tall and heavy for a toddler to climb out of or tip over. Plus they’re full of garbage. You’ve spent years telling your kids not to eat trash, so letting them munch on whatever they want should keep them quiet for a few minutes. Hopefully their shots are up to date. Just don’t forget your kids in the trash can when you leave. It takes forever to make new ones.

  Top Places to Temporarily Trap a Toddler When Zombies Attack

  Location

  Pro

  Con

  Under a Clothes Basket

  Lots of air holes.

  You’ll have to weigh it down with something heavy. Might crush the basket and the toddler.

  Random Fenced-In Yard

  They’re everywhere.

  Might contain zombies or dog poop.

  Cardboard Box

  Kids love these.

  You might be tempted to add stamps and mail them.

  Random Room in the Building You’re In

  Easy to toss a kid in and close the door.

  Might forget where you put them.

  On a Tree Branch

  Your kid probably won’t jump down.

  If you can reach, so can the undead. It’s an elevated zombie feeder.

  In an Abandoned Vehicle

  Zombies can’t open car doors.

  Kids will ruin the upholstery.

  On Top of an Abandoned Vehicle

  Gives your child an excellent vantage point from which to watch you fight.

  They’ll finally realize how bad you are at everything.

  At the Top of a Twirly Slide

  Built-in escape route if zombies climb the stairs.

  Kids will circle back and go down the slide again and again.

  LIMITED POTENTIAL

  Before you leave home with your children, you need a realistic idea of how far and fast you can travel on foot. This is true even if you have a vehicle. Cars get stuck or break down all the time. Once the world ends, there won’t be any mechanics to tell you that you need a thirty-five-cent part with $500 in labor. The zombie apocalypse is a bad time for a cross-country road trip. Sorry if your kids had their hearts set on a vacation to an abandoned, zombie-infested amusement park. It would probably still be too expensive.

  Try to keep all trips under ten miles. That way you at least have a chance to make it home if you have to flee on foot. If you draw that radius out from your house, that gives you roughly 300 square miles to scavenge in. If you can’t loot enough to survive in an area that size, your standard of living is too high for the end of the world. Cut back on the caviar, and save the good toilet paper for company.

  The size of the radius you can draw will depend on your individual level of endurance. There are some people who make physical fitness a priority even after they have children. These people are mysterious unicorns powered by dark magic. Avoid them at all costs. For the rest of us, moving long distances on foot will be a nightmare. As a parent, traveling one mile forward will require three miles of walking as you weave between children to break up fights, wipe noses, and backtrack to pick up stragglers. All this fruitless exercise will force you to get in shape without generating much forward progress. At least the zombies will be grateful. Lean meat is easier to chew than fat.

  ROLLING DOOM

  Luckily, ancient man invented a simple tool to solve this problem. No, I’m not talking about the inclined plane, although I love a good ramp as much as the next guy. The solution here is the wheel. You won’t have to waste energy herding your kids as you retreat if you can push them where you want them to go. This is especially handy if one of them is injured or uncooperative for no reason at all. A toddler’s temper tantrum is much less likely to get you killed if you can toss them on a cart like a sack of potatoes and move on with your life.

  Best Ways to Push Children

  Wheeled Device

  Pro

  Con

  Stroller

  Has straps to hold in little kids.

  Roll bars and crash helmets cost extra.

  Shopping Cart

  Also holds the stuff you loot.

  Comes straight from the factory with one bad wheel.

  Wheelbarrow

  Kids are lighter than mounds of dirt.

  Prone to tipping over when children are onboard. Slightly more serious than spilling mulch.

  Hand Cart

  Great for moving boxes.

  Kids are seldom box-shaped.

  Red Wagon

  Nostalgia.

  Rickety metal wheels are the only things on earth louder than your kids.

  Trashcan on Wheels

  With the lid on, you won’t hear them complain.

  Kids will require extra baths.

  Skateboard

  Kids can propel themselves.

  They’ll break a leg trying something stupid they saw on the internet.

  Janitor’s Mop Bucket

  Kid who stands in it will get a bonus foot cleaning.

  Will really piss off the janitor.

  RUN AWAY

  Parents are masters of the tactical retreat. Whether it’s a backyard barbecue or a shopping mall full of carnivorous corpses, moms and dads know how to feign an excuse and leave early before their kids break anything valuable. As a parent, you’ve been running away all your adult life. The only difference during the zombie apocalypse is it’ll make you a survivor, not a
social pariah. Remember: If in doubt, run away. It’s the bravest thing you can do.

  CHAPTER 6

  HIDE AND GO WEEP

  Running isn’t always the answer. Sometimes it’s better to shelter in place and wait for zombies to leave on their own. I use similar tactics against my children. If I dodge them for long enough, they’ll wander away and bother someone else. Like most adults, I spend the majority of my day fading into the background in the hope no one will notice I exist. All good parents are at least half chameleon.

  The real challenge will be teaching this skill to your children. Hiding combines the fun of being quiet with the excitement of sitting still. It’s the ultimate game of hide and seek against opponents who are literally brain dead. To win, all you have to do is stop fidgeting and shut up for a while. Kids are capable of neither. As an adult, you know you should be virtually catatonic if you’re hiding in a closet with zombies right outside the door. But to a kid, that’s the perfect time to loudly ask you about your favorite animal. At that moment, it’ll be a bear since they eat their young.

  BAD TO THE BONE

  Little kids are naturally terrible hiders. Thousands of years without any real predators wrecked their survival skills. Other species developed speed and camouflage to avoid being eaten, but Homo sapiens children didn’t have anything to fear. Our ancestors systematically wiped out every animal that posed a threat. Or was annoying. Or was fun to kill. Honestly, we went a little overboard, but better safe than sorry. For all we know, dodos could’ve eaten babies or something.

  For much of human history, being good at hiding was a detriment. Most parents don’t pay close attention to their children. A kid who is good at evading detection would be left behind. As the centuries passed, children found ways to be so stupidly obvious even the most grudging parents couldn’t pretend to forget about them. Today, little kids hide behind couches with only their heads covered or under tables where they’re visible for a full 360 degrees. Their goal isn’t to conceal themselves; it’s to be adorably incompetent. Parents are much more likely to feed a cute child than a stealthy one. This strategy worked brilliantly until real predators returned to the scene.

  Things Children Fail at on Purpose

  Skill

  Reason They Fail

  Hiding

  Makes them adorable. Harder to give them up for adoption.

  Folding Laundry

  Turns you into their personal maid until they’re adults.

  Tying Shoes

  Forces you to kneel down before them. Know your place.

  Sharing

  Lets them be selfish jerks for as long as possible.

  Walking

  Using your own legs is for suckers.

  Potty Training

  Nothing beats the convenience of pooping in the middle of the living room.

  Dishes

  If they stall for long enough, you’ll buy a dishwasher.

  Downloading Games

  They can always pretend they bought that app “by accident.”

  It’s delightful when toddlers “hide” behind curtains with their feet still sticking out, but only until they get eaten right in front of you.

  The first kids who were bad at hiding did it on purpose, but now children can’t help it. When it comes to this skill and many others, incompetence is hardwired into their systems. That silence you hear is millions of public school teachers not being surprised at all.

  It’s hard to imagine how kids could be any worse at hiding. They pick a bad spot the first time and then use it over and over again. Yes, kid, everyone sees you behind that inch-and-a-half-wide broom handle. But go ahead and hide there six more times and I’ll act shocked because it’s easier than searching the house to find you somewhere else. Bad hiding spots are offensive to everybody involved. When you’re looking for a kid and they hide behind a clear glass aquarium, it says as much about you as it does about them. They’re playing down to their competition.

  Miraculously, kids manage to take the most pathetic hiding spots in the world and make them worse. Rather than staying put, children jump out after a few seconds to check if anyone is about to find them. If there isn’t someone nearby, kids shout to attract attention. Common phrases they yell include, “You can’t find me,” “I’m over here,” “Are you even looking?” and “Stop taking a nap.” Like everyone else born since 1980, your children have short attention spans and a burning desire to be the center of attention. Neither is a great quality to have in a time when discretion can be the difference between life and death. “Millennial” is just a euphemism for “zombie bait.”

  HIDDEN POTENTIAL

  The only way your children will make it through the zombie apocalypse is if you teach them how to hide. This isn’t a skill they can learn from a teacher or coach. Those people will already be dead. You’ll be the ideal mentor by default. Don’t hide from this responsibility. It would be an ironic demonstration of your skills, but subtlety is wasted on children.

  The first step to making your kids better at hiding is to be honest with them. I’ve advocated lying over and over in this book, but this is one situation where telling the truth is the best approach. The faster you tear them down, the faster you can tear them down some more. Rebuilding them would make them more confident, but you really want their first instinct to be to cower.

  Send your children off to hide on their own. Then tell them how much their hiding places suck. Explain in excruciating detail how they let you down both as your children and as human beings. Use hand motions and maybe a few graphs or charts. The sooner your kids stop feeling good about their evasion skills, the sooner they’ll have a shot at survival. Self-esteem is for species that aren’t on the verge of extinction. Just be careful with your timing. Only make your kids cry when there are no zombies around. Kids seldom learn valuable life lessons when they’re dead.

  After your children understand how bad they are at hiding on their own, they’ll be ready for your expert guidance. This is your chance to shine as a parent. Challenge them to games of hide and seek. These vital life-and-death training sessions will look suspiciously like spending quality time with your kids. Work the illusion to your advantage. If they think you care about them, they’re less likely to shrug off all your advice. Studies show well-loved children only ignore 75 percent of what they’re told. You’re guaranteed to teach them something if you repeat yourself at least four times. Since you’re a parent, that should come naturally.

  Now these can’t be ordinary games of hide and seek. To simulate the pressures of a real-life zombie encounter, add penalties and rewards. Set a time limit. If your children hide for the full duration without being found, offer them some of the looted candy in your secret stash. If your children ask why you have a secret stash, calmly explain to them that they’re a ravenous horde of locusts that devours everything good in your life. They’ll understand. Don’t just hand the candy over, though. If they win, be sure to taste-test the prizes yourself first. You know, for safety reasons.

  If your children lose the hide and seek challenge, make the penalty proportionately awful. If a zombie found them, it would bite them on the spot. You shouldn’t go that far. It might make your kids think you’ve already turned. After all the time you’ll have spent berating them as part of these hiding lessons, it’ll be a bad idea to give them a pretext to kill you.

  The best penalties discourage a certain behavior while also benefiting the family. If you find your kids before time expires, make them do an unbearable chore like cleaning the bathrooms or listening to you talk about your childhood. Emphasize the part where kids today have it easy compared to the kids of your generation, even though you grew up in the era before zombies. You also grew up before the internet, which your children enjoyed for years before the world ended. It evens out. The more painful this story is for your kids, the stronger their incentive to hide better next time. But try not to literally bore them to death. Make the zombies work for it.

  The t
ime limit for the game should be exceptionally long. Since zombies don’t have anywhere better to be, they could linger outside a hiding spot for hours or even days. Tell your kids to hunker down and stay there indefinitely. You’ll let them know when time expires. It’ll teach them to be patient. It’ll also give you some peace and quiet for once in your life. Feel free to play this “game” for hours a day. Your sanity will thank you.

  SIZE MATTERS

  Older kids are better at hiding, but there are fewer places for them to disappear. It’s one of the many drawbacks of growing up. You’ll counteract some of those negatives by accident. A lack of food should keep your kids short. Combine that with children’s natural jellyfish-like bone structure and your kids should be able to squeeze into seemingly impossible spots where zombies will never find them well into their preteen years. Your kids will be grateful you failed them as a provider every time they shimmy into a new, tiny hideout. Although there might be some lingering resentment if they hoped to make it in the NBA.

  The Best Hiding Spots for Kids

  Hiding Spot

  Pro

  Con

  In a Deep Freezer

  Large, dark, and mostly soundproof.