How I Met Barbara The Zombie Hunter

by Raymund Hensley

We have no food left, save for this.”

  May the female version of God forgive me: For exactly three seconds I considered eating this Walking Dead Meat…and I hungered. Oh, no! I lusted for hideous bestial meat!

  Fighting off an intense wave of guilt and sickness, I turned around, crying into my hands. I could feel Barbara’s sweet touch on my shoulder. Her voice was that of a pure angel.

  “Dear, sir, please do not weep. I care for you and therefore would never feed thou anything upsetting and bestial. Now come to me. Turn around and come to me.”

  I sniffed, smiled, and turned around with my arms open.

  Barbara shoved a palm-full of bestial meat into my mouth. My eyes exploded. Barbara glued her hand to my mouth so I wouldn’t vomit the bestial meat out. She rode me like a pony as I got on all fours and pranced around, trying to spit up what was shoved down. Barbara reached back and produced a reel of duck tape and rolled the tape around and around my head, taping her hand to my mouth.

  I made serious horse sounds out of frustration, all the while trying to donkey kick her off my back. She wrestled me to the ground and we rolled around for a bit before she picked me up and pinned me against a tree. Pinecones fell, many hitting me on the head. I made curious whining sounds.

  She held her cheek to mine, violently, and I immediately became still, eyes bawling.

  “Silencio,” she whispered. “Silencio.”

  What had I become? How embarrassing. I must’ve seemed like a demonic toddler to her. I wished she wasn’t too turned off by my actions. I wanted to impress her, not disgust her! Holding my breath, I nodded, and swallowed the bestial meat, audibly.

  We looked into each other’s eyes.

  Two minutes later, I was gnawing on a zombie’s boiled breast. A whole breast that jiggled like fine Jell-O with each bite I made.

  The nipple was included.

  Happy, I threw it at Barbara, who caught it in her mouth and gave me a thumbs up.

  Fade out.

  Eighteen.

  We slogged for six hours, hiking up many trails and searching through many bushes. There were many undead stool samples to be found, but Barbara deemed it unnecessary. I had already experienced the zombie’s dried dung. Barbara’s main goal was to teach me the ways of the hunter – the steady growth of the sidekick into hunter knighthood.

  At around 9pm, it was time to find a soft place to set up the tent. Barbara excused herself so she could urinate in peace. I said that I’d do the same.

  As I sat on my heels behind a bush and pushed for heaven, a shadow moved – in the darkness between two trees.

  My buttocks shut tight.

  I stared intensely into the woods, slowly zipping my pants and catching my breath.

  A Japanese schoolgirl slouched out from the dark.

  I stood up, embarrassed, and combed my hair with my hands.

  “Hello,” I said, politely. “How may I help you this fine night?”

  She didn’t respond…only looked down to the ground. This girl kept walking at a very slow speed. I knew when she began moaning, and drooling moths, that she was a member of the living dead.

  My heart drooped.

  What a depressing sight.

  How can something so attractive be so dead?

  My mind wandered and I literally had to slap myself straight. Barbara wasn’t too far off. I went to get her as the zombie followed me.

  I asked if we should kill it. Barbara had a plan. She eyed the zombie from head to toe and instructed me to tie back its hands – only its hands – and for me to go to sleep as she took it out for a walk.

  I did as I was told and crawled into our tent, falling fast asleep.

  I woke up at 3am. Barbara wasn’t in the tent. Afraid for her safety, I took a stake and went out venturing for her, flashlight in tow.

  There was a tree in the distance, on a tall hill.

  Figures were on it, moving around.

  I began to hear moaning sounds.

  Scared, I ran back to the tent.

  5am. I couldn’t go to sleep. Barbara returned, so I closed my eyes and rolled over. She yawned and went to bed. Barbara smelt strange. She was covered with a familiar scent – a familiar scent that was now laced with the dead’s perfume.

  5:30am. The wind began to pick up and rattle the tent. I wanted to hurt Barbara. I grabbed my flashlight and stormed out from the tent. It was a noisy exit and I hoped that yes, indeed, she heard me.

  It was raining again, the wind blowing the storm sideways.

  I hugged myself for warmth.

  Soon, I found myself back at that tree under the moonglow.

  The cheerleader was sitting on the dirt, in the nude, her arms tied behind the tree. She wasn’t moving…head bowed…hair swaying to the cool breeze.

  I squatted in front of her.

  She looked so peaceful.

  The zombie sensed me and looked up, eyes totally black. It groaned. I knew that zombies had no emotion other than anger and sometimes confusion…but at that moment, I sensed shame in the beast.

  I exhaled and stood up.

  The thing slithered about, trying to stand.

  I closed my eyes and held my flashlight close to my heart, tightly. I looked up to the dreary clouds. The raindrops felt good, massaging my face.

  Taking a good stance, I gripped her head with my free hand and hit the creature over the skull with the flashlight until it stopped looking at me.

  I threw my red-covered flashlight into the bushes and went back into the tent.

  Barbara was sound asleep.

  She hadn’t followed me. She hadn’t cared.

  I closed my eyes for not a minute when I began to have a dream. I was drowning in a stormy ocean that rose and fell…the winds stung my face. Giant waves crashed all over me and pushed me into its stygian underbelly. I was engulfed with the sudden, dark fear of utter loneliness.

  I expected the cheerleader to save me.

  She didn’t come.

  …No one did.

  Emo-typical.

  Nineteen.

  We were walking on a thin hiking trail that was on the edge of the mountain. A wrong step and one could tumble to certain death.

  It was hot. The sun was screaming at us.

  Barbara tried to impress me by doing a cartwheel down the path. I laughed at her and told her to be careful, but she made devil horns and wiggled her tongue at me and went “Blahhhhhhhhh”. Someone was running toward us, yelling and waving.

  This Italian hiker was just attacked by a mad woman that tried to taste him. She was an evil spirit, he said – void of skin and meat. “She was the walking rot!”

  The hiker threw many sharp rocks at the person and even yelled at her. Some rocks hit her hard in the face, but she wouldn’t go away – let alone react. The Italian’s group was still there. He had left them and felt incredibly guilty.

  Barbara and I nodded to each other. She asked the man if he could take us to this “walking rot”. The Italian hiker shrieked in terror with crazy memories and ran down the trail…his screams fading.

  We walked down the trail and soon enough entered a bamboo forest with a clearing made long ago by the park’s staff.

  There were in fact five zombies – four of them surely the Italian’s group members. The main zombie – the walking rot – had her back to us: A back that had fallen apart long ago. They were all eating bamboo shoots for some reason. Barbara took me by the shoulders and said, “You must go in there as one of them. Get in there, you hear me? Get in there and get close to them and cut off their heads with this here machete (she pronounced it as maishit-tay).”

  “How am I supposed to get close?”

  “Thee shall dress up as one of them.”

  “Oh, I’m no actor. I tried that and failed miserably!”

  Barbara drew her face close to mine.

  “This is not Acting, child. This is Becoming.”

  My heart pounded. My breath came in short spurts. My lungs weren’t working right
. My legs had social anxiety disorder. I was going to die. At least I could run fast.

  I walked in with my arms up, biting my shoulder, moaning in fake pain. Barbara had taken a blade to my clothing and ripped it to shreds.

  The zombies looked at me and then went back to their eating.

  It had worked!

  Amazement!

  I sat next to them and pretended to eat a piece of bamboo, daintily. One of the zombies looked at me funny, and I smiled at it, going, “Mmmm.”

  The zombie rolled its eyes and got up to eat bamboo elsewhere.

  Sick from munching on bamboo, I got out my machete and crept up to each one, slicing off their heads and running away before any gore got on me.

  I asked if I had done a good job. Barbara threw me a towel and a bottle of Secret Garden by Victoria’s Secret.

  “You sing of stink.”

  As we walked through the bamboo clearing, Barbara gazed at the decapitated heads and noticed something.

  She fell to her knees and sobbed, mumbling a prayer.

  I stayed where I was and said nothing.

  My arms and legs shook. Barbara whipped her head to me, her eyes full of tears and hate.

  Twenty.

  Barbara ran after me, screaming like a confused pig on a treadmill. I didn’t run until the last moment, hoping this was just some kind of scary test. She raised her machete and sliced at me – and would’ve got me on the shoulder hadn’t I spun and ran.

  My mind erased. Had she finally snapped?

  Why?

  I couldn’t hear her anymore. Where did she go? Barbara had grown quiet…maybe tiptoeing and checking for me behind bushes.

  I ran up a steep hill and sat under a thick tree to catch my breath, hiding behind a curtain of tangled vines. Barbara had seen something. One of the heads had upset her to the point of bad rage.