Flash Friday - Zombies

Special for Halloween.

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If you’re reading this then you must have gotten away, heard the warning sirens or one of the last news reports. Thank goodness. You’re one of the lucky ones.

I’m giving this letter to the underground network. I told them to look for you, to try to get it to you, to tell you I’m thinking of you. I know I’ll never see you again. I have a gun and will use it when they get too close. I won’t become one of them.

Guns don’t work on zombies.

I was at home with Zack when they attacked. You remember how I told you on the weekends we turned off the tv and radio, shut off our computers so we could just relax? That’s what did us in. We didn’t know they were coming. We heard the sirens but figured it was just the police running for donuts again. So we ignored the noise.

I don’t know if it would have made any difference at that point anyway, they were everywhere.

We were upstairs, in bed, when we heard the banging, windows breaking. It’s the usual story, I’m sure you’ve heard it over and over. Zack thought it was burglars, so he took his baseball bat – you remember the one we used for softball when you visited last summer – and crept down the stairs. They were already inside. He ran back up, locked the bedroom door and tried to tell me what he saw. I didn’t believe him, went to open the door, and he hit me. He hit me. He’d never done anything like that before, but he hit me to keep me away from that door. I knew it was something serious then. He wrapped his arms around me and cried, telling me how sorry he was, but there was something awful out there.

That’s when we heard the banging on the door and the moaning. I have nightmares about that moaning and wake up screaming. Do you?

He pushed me towards the window, the one that overlooks the garage roof. It was a lovely dawn, bright and clear, and there were zombies in the house. It seemed like something out of a stupid horror movie, the kind he liked to watch so he could laugh at me when I got scared.

The door broke. And zombies came in. I don’t have to tell you how awful they look; I don’t have to tell you about the smell.

We struggled to push the air conditioner out of the way and open the window as they shambled closer. Zack had his baseball bat and swung at them, connecting with one on the head. It made a sound like a rotten melon and it fell, just as I opened the window and climbed out. He was coming out behind me, and they grabbed him. I latched onto his arm and pulled, and it was like some kind of terrible tug-o-war. He kept yelling for me to go, but I just couldn’t let him go. Then I heard a tearing sound, and he started screaming. Not for long. All I had in my hands was part of his shirt.

I jumped off the roof, got on my motorcycle and took off. Some chased me, but I was too fast. I was crying and screaming the whole time.

Some people in the underground found me after I crashed the bike.

We’ve been hunkered down here for awhile now, but we’re running out of food and they’re closing in. When I crashed I hurt my leg, it hasn’t healed right. I can’t go with everyone else. That’s why I’m sending you this letter, so someone will remember. So someone will remember Zack. and all I have left of Zack so I know someone will remember him.

Be careful. Be vigilant.

Stay alive.

Traffic. A micro-rant.

I really try not to let traffic upset me. When I'm sitting in my car, creeping along, I use the time for reflection, to listen to music or NPR, I tell myself stories. Sometimes I watch the patterns and try to figure out where the swirls and eddies are that cause the congestion. I think about chaos theory. Usually this works well enough.

Not so this week.

I have been the avatar of Kali behind the wheel (alright, maybe not Kali, but perhaps her irritated younger cousin) ranting and raving at every jerk who cuts me off or drives too slowly. I've had no patience, trying to find alternate routes at the drop of a hat. I'm reaching for my map book (remember those? Before mapquest and googlemaps and gps made us all forget how to navigate the world?), watching my gas gauge creep down (I drive a Toyota Corolla and get reasonably good mileage, so this adds to my ire) while my blood pressure creeps up. I'm out there with all of the other driving zombies, trying not to become another statistic, and lately I've had no patience with it at all.

All of this seems to have happened because I'm leaving work just a little bit later. A mere 30 minutes has added hours of angst into my life. Bah. I guess this is a product of our modern, convenient life, but I don't like it.

More than the traffic, what I don't like is how I feel myself changing into someone else when I get behind the wheel. I used to like driving and now I feel like I'm girding for battle. I don't want to become one of those drivers, you know the kind, but I have to say, this week, I've had more sympathy.

I'd like to write something interesting here about how this could be part of my daily hero's j0urney, through the test of traffic, but honestly, it just seems trite. I'd be trying way too hard. Traffic just sucks and right now is especially trying.

Thanks for listening.

(c) 2008 Laura S. Packer

Further zombie thoughts

Found letter
If you’re reading this then you must have gotten away, heard the warning sirens or one of the last news reports. Thank goodness. You’re one of the lucky ones.

I’m giving this letter to the underground network. I told them to look for you, to try to get it to you, to tell you I’m thinking of you. I know I’ll never see you again. I have a gun and will use it when they get too close. I won’t become one of them.

Guns don’t work on zombies.

I was at home with Zack when they attacked. You remember how I told you on the weekends we turned off the tv and radio, shut off our computers so we could just relax? That’s what did us in. We didn’t know they were coming. We heard the sirens but figured it was just the police running for donuts again. So we ignored the noise.

I don’t know if it would have made any difference at that point anyway, they were everywhere.

We were upstairs, in bed, when we heard the banging, windows breaking. It’s the usual story, I’m sure you’ve heard it over and over by now. Zack thought it was burglars, so he took his baseball bat – you remember the one we used for softball when you visited last summer – and crept down the stairs. They were already inside. He ran back up, locked the bedroom door and tried to tell me what he saw. I didn’t believe him, went to open the door, and he hit me. He hit me. He’d never done anything like that before, but he hit me to keep me away from that door. I knew it was something serious then. He wrapped his arms around me and cried, telling me how sorry he was, but there was something awful out there.

That’s when we heard the banging on the door and the moaning. I have nightmares about that moaning and wake up screaming. Do you?

He pushed me towards the window, the one that overlooks the garage roof. It was a lovely dawn, bright and clear, and there were zombies in the house. It seemed like something out of a stupid horror movie, the kind he liked to watch so he could laugh at me when I got scared.

The door broke. And zombies came in. I don’t have to tell you how awful they look; I don’t have to tell you about the smell.

We struggled to push the air conditioner out of the way and open the window as they shambled closer. Zack had his baseball bat and swung at them, connecting with one on the head. It made a sound like a rotten melon and it fell, just as I opened the window and climbed out. He was coming out behind me, and they grabbed him. I latched onto his arm and pulled, and it was like some kind of terrible tug-o-war. He kept yelling for me to go, but I just couldn’t let him go. Then I heard a tearing sound, and he started screaming. Not for long. All I had in my hands was part of his shirt.

I jumped off the roof, got on my motorcycle and took off. Some chased me, but I was too fast. I was crying and screaming the whole time.

Some people in the underground found me after I crashed the bike.

We’ve been hunkered down here for awhile now, but we’re running out of food and they’re closing in. When I crashed I hurt my leg, it hasn’t healed right. I can’t go with everyone else. That’s why I’m sending you this letter and all I have left of Zack so I know someone will remember him.

Be careful. Be vigilant.
Stay alive.

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This was inspired by a swap-bot swap on surviving the zombie wars. It was accompanied by a torn scrap of bloodstained t-shirt.

It was fun writing in this voice, so different from my own. At least I hope it's different, though who knows how I'd sound under those circumstances.

(c) 2007 Laura S. Packer

Why zombies?

When I was a little girl I had a recurring nightmare in which a slow, shambling creature would chase me with deadly intent. No matter where I hid, no matter what I did, it kept coming. I could not escape, and sooner or later it would get me, though I would usually wake before I could feel its cold, clammy hands rending me limb from limb. The fact that in this dream the creature was a mummy (inspired no doubt by the Universal Mummy films) doesn’t diminish the horror nor does it negate the striking similarity between this nightmare monster and the zombies we’re seeing everywhere. The shamble. The rot. The inexorable nature of the beast.

The cannibalistic dead have been around for a long time, referenced in the epic of Gilgamesh when Ishtar, enraged by Gilgamesh’ refusal of her advances, threatens to “…let the dead go up to eat the living!” They’ve waxed and waned in popularity since. Zombies first appeared in popular film in White Zombie, released in 1932 and starring Bela Lugosi. Zombies as we think of them were defined by George Romero in his Dawn of the Dead and subsequent sequels. And these days they are everywhere.

So what is it about zombies? What are we so obsessed with them?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, as have lots of other people. Philosophers love zombies, because it allows for different kinds of speculation about human behavior (a human being without full consciousness allows for thought experiments against the concepts of identity and the mind).

Frankly, I think this philosophical discussion is just what film makers and social activists are engaging in, only with more gore and humor. They are exploring, and we are exploring with them, what happens when masses of people stop thinking and simply react, driven by basic, consuming needs. Zombies consume mindlessly and their need to consume is contagious. They spread fear. They are the ultimate expression of group-think without independent motivation or action beyond consume.

Let’s see, what other entities are consuming mindlessly, promoting mindless consumption, and are using fear as their weapon against those that don’t want to consume? I’ll leave that as a rhetorical question, because several entities fit that bill to one degree or another, and they all are ubiquitous, surrounding us every day and urging us to join them, stand with them, watch them, vote for them, etc.

I suspect our obsession with zombies also rises from a desire to belong. If you’re a zombie, you don’t have to think, you just shamble along with everyone else. It’s not like being a werewolf, where you have that whole lone wolf issue to contend with. If you’re a zombie you can go outside during the day or night, not like those elitist vampires. If you’re a zombie you’re part of the group. And you’re already dead, so it doesn’t matter if someone kills you. Your whole mission is to make more zombies, not hide any annoying secrets (can you imagine how much werewolves spend on clothes?) or deal with politics (the way vampires have to). It’s a simpler, more inclusive way of life. Or death.

And zombies are safe to fantasize about. They capture our fears about group think and brain washing, not to mention cannibalism and contagion, but we’re pretty sure we’d be able to beat them if they really showed up. We’re smarter than zombies right? We can use them for social commentary (nothing like shambling down the street or through a mall with a political sign accompanied by other zombies to make a point) but it’s commentary done with humor and fake blood, so it’s not too threatening to the powers that be. But bystanders see the zombies and read the signs.

Zombies are an excellent nightmare for the early 21^st century. Fearful, inexorable, contagious, and visible. They are not terrorists but the fear terrorists seek to create. They are not our government but the control our government is trying to invoke. They are not our media, but the way our media sponsors try to drive us to behave. They are the perfect metaphor for these creeping, inevitable times.

But just in case: To kill a zombie you must destroy its brain. Fire won’t work, a bullet to any other part of the body won’t work. Destroy its brain and if you have the time, burn the body. If all else fails, run and don’t look back.

(c) 2007 Laura S. Packer