It had been ten years since that first tweet.
Shit. Guy eating some other guy's face at McDonalds! #zombieapocalypse
I had laughed along with the others at the time, despite the gruesome nature of the joke. I'd discussed my zombie survival plan with my friends, debating weapons (guns vs. machetes) and hideouts (abandoned high-rise vs. abandoned farm). Everyone knew there would be a perfectly good explanation, be it mind-altering drugs or just an altered mind and so laughing at the horribleness of it all had felt okay.
I wiped the sweat from his eyes and looked around the dim cavern. Was it safe? I didn't care. I stopped pushing the trolley, weighed down with ten hours' worth of digging, and bent over the handle, resting my forehead on my arms and closing my eyes. A brief, sweet moment of reprieve.
The second time it happened, a week later in the same city, everyone assumed the same thing; it was either drugs or general craziness. The guy was chewing on a piece of some woman's thigh when he was shot dead. When the photos started spreading though, people began to notice things. Someone pointed out that the "zombie" was wearing four hundred dollar shoes. The tie was Armani, the watch Tag Heuer. Not exactly the type of person to be doing bad drugs on a Tuesday afternoon. Someone more likely to deal with a mental break down by running away with his assistant than chewing on a mother of four in a parking lot.
I heard familiar yelling coming from further down the tunnel. Reflexively I straightened up and started pushing the trolley again, mindful not to dislodge any of its precious load. The last thing I wanted to do was to be caught picking up a spill by the guards. The scars on my back were still healing from last time.
The third and fourth times, people were still making jokes, but it wasn't as funny. The fifth and sixth times, those who'd joked about the zombie apocalypse most had stocked up on supplies. The seventh and eighth times, those who had dismissed such claims as "preposterous" found that their weekly shop included a lot more canned food and bottled water than usual. During the ninth, tenth and eleventh times, everyone stopped using the word zombie. They were called biters, cannibals, anything but the "z" word. It had started with one a week, then it became two. It spread, and quickly. By the time the sixteenth report came in, it had happened in six cities. Then it exploded.
I heard the punishment happening before I saw it. The flash-whips (they had a real name but no one could pronounce it) gave off a loud, crackling static sound that was unmistakable. Between that and the screams, I knew what I was about to encounter before I even turned the corner. Some poor woman had done something wrong. I didn't know what. Maybe it was a failure to meet quota, or work fast enough. Maybe it was taking five seconds to close her eyes, just as I had done only moments ago. Whatever it was, she was paying for it now. As I pushed the trolley past, I dared not look at the hulking figure raining pain and terror down on the poor woman.
The time between infection and the "change", as it came to be known, varied from person to person. Sometimes it could take weeks, but never less than five days. The worst part was that you didn't know you were infected because you didn't get sick. The infection just lay in your body, gathering resources, making itself strong enough to take you over in one fell swoop. By the time anyone realised that it was serious, the infection was all over the world. Neighbours, friends and family all turned on each other. Martial law was declared almost everywhere, schools were shut down and suicides and murders increased a thousand fold. It was chaos in every sense of the word. The world was so focused on fighting with each other, it didn't occur to anyone to look up.
"Stop!"
I stopped. Everyone stopped. When a guard said stop in your general vicinity, you just dropped what you were doing and waited to see if they were talking to you. Assuming it was aimed at someone else wasn't worth it.
We didn't see them coming until we were surrounded. Some hoped that they would save us. That hope didn't last long.
The guard came from behind me and into view. Everyone said they all looked the same, but you could tell them apart if you looked close enough. I saw the scar under the left eye, the right ear slightly lower than the left, the patch of skin on the chin that was a darker shade of red than the rest of his face, that missing scale on his neck. This was "The Bastard", the cruellest guard in the mountain. I didn't even hear what my infraction was. All I heard was the crackling of the flash-whip, followed by the searing pain of my back being ripped open.
They'd been watching us for years, trying to find a weakness. Then, at the beginning of the century, we gave them one. We told them what we were scared of, what we feared, but also secretly hoped would happen. Our books, our movies, our TV shows and thoughts all broadcast into the deepest corners of space. They could travel the stars, so it wasn't hard for them to create the infection. And then, while we were killing ourselves, they came and took what they wanted. Our planet. Us.
Not for the first time, I wished I was a zombie.
The End
~~~
Dedicated to BecLehman writer of this short story.