The Only Good Zombie Is A Dead One (© Biswapriya Purkayastha)
Page 1 The Zombocalypse struck next Friday. All over the world, the dead rose from
their graves, even in those nations where the dead were cremated and had no
graves to rise from. They rose though they were too decomposed to rise, kicking
and clawing through their wooden coffins and the earth over their graves, or
the concrete doorways of their burial crypts, even though the impact should
have broken their rotting bodies into pieces. All over the world, the dead shambled
towards the living, arms outstretched, drooling even though their salivary glands
were dead so that they couldn’t produce saliva; and moaning, even though they
were dead and so didn’t breathe and therefore shouldn’t be moaning. All over the world, then, the zombies
moaned and drooled and snacked (but only snacked) on the living, so that they,
in turn, then began snacking lightly on more of the living. All over the world,
militaries who would have thought nothing of tearing apart enemy armoured
divisions were overwhelmed by a few rotting corpses staggering around. All over
the world, bulldozer operators who might have shovelled the dead back into the
ground abandoned their vehicles and ran away, truck drivers who could have
turned the zombies to paste beneath the wheels of their giant rigs gave up the
ghost and joined the undead ranks, and civilisation tottered and began to fall. Enter the heroes. There were five of
them – five precisely. The first was the Tough Guy, a survivalist who had
prepared well ahead for the Zombocalypse and was loaded down with all the
attitude, training and aggression he needed. The second was the Stupid Moron
Who Almost Gets Everybody Killed. The third was the Beautiful Woman, the hope
for the continuation of the human race. The fourth was the Sneaky Cowardly Guy,
easily identified by his whining. And the fifth was the Everyman, who doubled
as the True Hero. Our quintet went first to a local gun
store to load up with weapons. The gun store, of course, hadn’t been looted by
the 1,987,654 other living humans in the city who had got the same idea.
Nor had its owner, who, presumably, also wanted to live, defended his
store with the 124 shotguns, 78 hunting rifles, 32 converted assault rifles, or
386 assorted handguns on his premises. Our quintet loaded themselves up with
the weapons and then went on to a mall, similarly deserted, where they packed
their pickup truck full of food, drink and sanitary napkins. The Beautiful
Woman was about to take along some birth control pills as well but was stopped
by the Tough Guy. Then they drove out of town, because
they’d heard that there were no zombies in Alaska, if only they could get
there; it was too cold for them, and, besides, Sarah Palin spent her spare time
shooting any stray zombies from helicopters while not shooting Russians from
her living room window. On the way they found only a few scattered vehicles, of
course; certainly no bumper to bumper traffic jams caused by 654,321 cars
frantically attempting to escape the city. They could also stop to fuel their
truck at a petrol pump. Unfortunately, they were attacked by the pump’s
attendants, who were now zombies, and the Tough Guy had to shoot these Dead
Fucks through the head to put them down. Soon afterwards they came across ten
zombies forming an immovable mass in the middle of the street. The Stupid
Moron, who was driving, swerved to avoid them and drove into the ditch. In
order to conserve ammunition, the Tough Guy and the Everyman destroyed these
Fiends and Ghouls by bashing their heads in with crowbars, while the Coward
snivelled and whined. In the process of all this Ghoul-whacking, both the Tough
Guy and the Everyman got liberally splashed with zombie blood, but, of course,
weren’t infected with anything. They didn’t even stink enough afterwards to
disturb anyone. They were trying to get the truck out of
the ditch when the Evil Militia arrived, captured them and dragged them off to
the Compound of the Grand Dictator, who was planning to rape the Beautiful
Woman while turning the other four into slaves. On discovering this, the Tough
Guy suggested a plan to escape. This plan involved climbing over the roofs of
the camp buildings to the armoury, the most heavily guarded building in camp,
breaking it open, stealing all the weapons and fighting their way to the
vehicle park, there to steal a truck and destroy all the others to prevent
pursuit. [ Continue to page 2 ] |