Zombies!

What is it they are trying to tell me?

Am I “in for it”, or is the thing that bellows my name and chases me in the ethereal mise-en-scene afraid of me?

I was in control and not in control at all, the juxtaposition just the way I like it. Everything at once. I was each and every character and yet removed from them, from their physical pain, from their terror and emotion. I wielded the ax and my personally assigned warrior wielded his….first in a fight with each other, and then against the lot of them. The walking, misshapen and flesh/face eating zombies. They looked relatively typical, and yet somehow they popped out of the woods, out of our escape route and would surround one female character after another. But, I wasn’t so concerned with them. Even when the blondish one looked back to me, about to have her face torn off by ravenous, jagged teeth en masse, she looked despondent almost at me, as if this was all MY fault. Well, sorry honey, maybe it is. But I’m over here with this here ax in my hand, and you’re there in a ring around the rosy of flesh eating zombie people. That’s just the way it worked. You draw in the energy and experience you give out, really is a solid piece of truth, even in the nightmare world of horror.

Our axes flew threw the air, almost hitting our faces, but we kept ducking from them, and eventually gathered enough reserve to decide that we couldn't wait in the limo (the only car in the parking lot) anymore. And, apparently, one of the two unconscious ones we tried to take with us was a renowned doctor. The other guy eventually got taken too, but not us. That’s the thing. They (zombies) are Everywhere, aren’t they. They literally pop up like weeds around you, in a moment’s notice – eating, drinking and devouring your last bits in the chorus drone that they always carry with them. That insignificant sound of null. They grow strong in numbers, but each by themselves is empty. Maggots fulfilling their wildest fantasies on their insides’ organs, cells, thoughts, dreams (do zombies dream of better days?)…And you can turn into one, it seems, like That. They bite you and before you know it, there you are. Face half off, skin and blood on parade, teeth exposed and no human soul left to speak of. Your will robbed of you. Remember, it’s not the other way around. The will is not a moveable object in and of itself.

So, he and I and the other mercenary types who managed to sustain and act, well, we decided to fly a plane on out of here, since the highways were filled with army and those things were teeming, looming, sucking at us, everywhere. Up was the only direction to go. Turned out many of us could fly, and we confidently boarded on that plane, the zombies close at hand, moving at us in that fast-slow concave motion that they were known for. In the plane, we were living the high life. Free from all the trauma, the terror, the feeling of being consumed without control by the marching dead, which walked alive only in form and not in spirit. At one point, we thought the old man had been somehow changed, bitten – he was frothing, and tossing things at us and completely disoriented. But, no one had snuck onto the plane that was already dead, thankfully. False alarm and we laughed at each other. The old man was just dreaming, it turned out. Dreaming vivid like I was now.

We heard the soaring and clean whoooosh of the plane as it sailed forward, and onto new shores. We had weeks to fly and enough petrol to turn out the winners of this little test of bravery. We stayed ourselves, and clanked our glasses with all the free airline booze we could ingest. That feeling soared into morning, and I knew I had to be on the lookout for them anyway, as the zombies on this side of things don’t bare their teeth and show their colours all that easy, do they. All the same, the battleaxe dripping life blood from my heart wasn’t planted at the center of my chest, either. We all wear our ruptured victories a lot closer to ourselves than that.

M. Lucia