by D.R. Johnson
It's after...
I can’t give you an exact date, but I know I'm heading into the fifth winter since the world tumbled into chaos. I was only eighteen when it started. Young. Irresponsible. Selfish. The traits every child had by right as they floundered into adulthood. At least until everything was stripped away.
I can still remember what started it all. It was a hot summer morning when an article popped up on my news feed that piqued my interest.
Zombie Attack in Florida!
Who could resist clicking that link? Not to mention, it was from the Washington Post, a news source that even I recognized as creditable.
After quickly scanning the article and finding out the attack was drug induced, my curiosity died, but the details of the attack were still chilling. The 'zombie' had been high on a new drug called bath salts and apparently decided he was hungry enough to chow down on the most convenient meal he could get his hands on. That just so happened to be the face of the nearest homeless man.
Drugs are bad, mkay?
As disturbing as that image is, that wasn't the most bizarre thing I read in that article. To me, the worst part was reading how the cop tried to stop the face-eater. I imagine he started off by saying something along these lines;
"Excuse me, good sir. Could you refrain from eating this gentleman's face?"
Or maybe he went with something a bit more commonplace and just yelled 'FREEZE!' The details weren't very clear on that. What was clear was the fact that he shot the guy and only got growled at for his trouble. Then our zombie went right back to munchin'. A bullet in his stomach barely fazed him! The second bullet the cop put in his head certainly proved more of an inconvenience. He may not have felt pain, but that killed him. He was for real dead after that. None of that undead bullshit.
The article was just a flash in the pan that quickly faded away.
Then came that fateful December and the doomsayers were saying what they will. Surprisingly enough, the Mayans had it right, but the world didn't end in volcanoes and earthquakes and hurricanes.
No. It turned out to be us all along. We wanted so badly to believe in something that we ended up pulling the trigger on ourselves.
It started with more face-eaters popping up around Christmas, and the media informed us it was all linked to the bath salts drug again. Only it wasn't bath salts. Maybe it was a virus, or an outbreak of some kind, but those first face-eaters were our warning before everything went to hell. Most of us weren't even paying attention to the beginning of the end.
By New Year, there was no recovering from the infestation. Before the news stations went down, they'd finally decided to stop feeding us the bath salt bullshit. They told us to stay in our houses. Lock the doors. Load the guns.
Five years ago, the end of days arrived.
The Phoenix Curse - After
Part One
Chapter 1 - Ali
