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I used to come here…a long time ago. I would stand on top of the old slide and hold my arms high in the air; I was the king up there. On some days I would twist myself so tight in the swing until the chains were ready to break. When my feet could longer hold me on the ground I would let go and spin wildly with the untangling links, while the world rotated all around me. The old seesaw was here too, as were the monkey bars and merry-go-round. Each is rusted now, only a decaying relic of better times…and so is the world.

I come here to think because unlike the corpses of people, the corpses of the playground relics don't move. I can still climb atop the slide and look out on the world I swore in my youth I was ruler of. Sometimes I think I hear children's voices, but when I look around I find none. They are only in my head. I cry and it mixes with the howls of the dead who roam my streets…these are the only real noises left. A light wind blows this morning causing the rusty swing to move again. Its shadow creeps to where I sit on the asphalt and is quickly pulled away by momentum. I contemplate sitting on the swing again; to close my eyes and tip my head back shutting out the world. This thought is brief as is my time at the playground.

All around me they begin to gather in greater numbers mixing with the shadows of trees and the dead leaves that fall from them. Rotting hands reach out, behind them rotting teeth still strong enough to pull the flesh from my bones. I steady my sniper rifle on the close ones and fire. They fall to pavement below and are quickly stepped over by others. I try to keep this place free of bodies, yet each day they grow in numbers, and I become overrun. My time here becomes shorter and shorter, but my work here still must be done. It is on the black tar of this playground amid the hopscotch area, and faded foul lines of the basketball court that I leave my mark. It is here I call out to others who may have survived, and pray for an answer. Each day I must return here to rewrite my phrase if the rain has washed the chalk away, or clear the fallen leaves or trash that may cover it. It simply reads:

Every day I come here I hope to see a message but there is none. Some days I contemplate my plan thinking the rain may have washed away my chalk as this plague has washed away people like me. As each 2 pm ends in disappointment I fear more and more that I am the last. Like the skeleton of the city I dwell in, the dead will soon devour all life within me. Sadly they are doing it, without having taken one bite of my flesh.

I have found that the school building (of which the playground belongs to) provides the most efficient defense from the creatures for me. By removing the outside handles on its few doors I am able to deter the many curious zombies who peer through its reinforced windows (those awful 4 inch thick ones with a mesh cage built in for shatter reduction). I find that the fire escape provides the best entrance and exit via a top floor window. I avoid moving about the bottom floor since many of the widows face the main street, and activity inside buildings seems to draw crowds of undead. The library contains many books that I eagerly read each day to pass the time, and to keep myself from forgetting how beautiful things once were. At first I read anything that looked interesting, and later found the covers of books to be very deceptive. Complex characters, powerful poetry, and admirable adventures were well hidden behind dusty, bland looking covers. I poured through thick novels and anthologies; anything to escape the sadness and decay that was progressing around me. Many nights I slept among the sounds of the dead, hoping to awaken upon a Greek shore with Circe, or among the harems in mysterious Arabia. There was no escaping the surrounding world that was slowly becoming a crypt, but the books provided me with a temporary vacation.

The school also serves as a perfect vantage point for me to look out on the playground and other areas. Some days prove too dangerous to leave and repair my sign, but I am still able to safely view it from the roof. In the beginning I feared being seen by the occasional passing group of looters, yet as the days progress I find that the plague has even conquered the most ruthless of men, as I no longer see them. On those days when travel is difficult, I keep a vigilant watch for someone who may have wandered into my playground. Lately I have seen no one.

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