It's Not So Bad Living in the Zombie Apocalypse

Alice Austin

It’s tough at first, but you survive it all. The long nights spent reliving loved ones’ deaths in your head over and over. The hope of a cure cruelly snatched away as research centers and hospitals fall to ravenous swarms. The cold, biting realization that things will never return to the way they were. One by one, you lose everyone and everything you ever cared about.

You make new friends and lose them to gnashing teeth. You settle down somewhere safe, until someone makes a mistake and a zombie gets in. Just one. That’s all it takes and then you’re on the run again, over and over until it feels like there’s nowhere left to go. Those things are everywhere, and safety is nothing but a distant memory.

It’s only a matter of time before you slip up. Only a matter of time before they’re on you, a million hands grasping at your hair and clawing at your skin. Blunt, broken teeth clamping around your arm, your legs, your hand.

It’s too late to fight them off. They’ve already broken your skin and the virus courses through your veins, thriving and replicating and corrupting. It’s the end. If your wounds don’t kill you, the disease will. There’s nothing to do but lie down and wait to bleed out.

The mauling continues until the horde recognizes you as one of its own and the zombies release you and shuffle away. You stand up on chewed legs and stagger off. An onlooker would see you as just another revenant, but you haven’t succumbed yet. You’re still burning with life; with the desperate, primal desire not to become one of them. Death is the only cure for this disease, and it’s time to take your medicine.

But you can’t do it. You dither and delay; your desperate, screaming will to live overpowers all rational thought. Even as the contagion blackens your blood and gnaws at your nervous system, you can’t bring yourself to die.

And then it’s too late. Your muscles lock and you collapse, blood seeping from your eyes and mouth. You convulse, agony shooting through your nerves and setting your skin ablaze. It would’ve been better if you’d died like you were meant to, a quick dignified end. The whole world comes crashing in on you as you writhe on the floor.

But that’s not even the worst part.

When your muscles fall limp, you’re still awake.

You’re still awake as your body picks itself off the floor. You’re still awake as it shambles off to join the horde, grunting as its shredded flesh tears further with every step.

You’re still awake when you see a survivor and break into a lurching run, feet leaving bloody prints in the dirt. It’s someone you recognize; an old friend who you’d assumed had died long ago. His eyes widen in horror as he sees you, his lips forming your name as he pleads you to stop.

You wish you could, but you’re not in control anymore. Your dead fingertips sense the hammering terror of his pulse as your hand clamps shut around his wrist, and your tongue tastes the hot rush of blood that spurts from his shoulder as you dig your teeth in and begin to tear. And then the rest of the horde closes in and they begin pulling him apart with you.

Your eyes lock when he finally lurches to his feet, stumbling and moaning, and somewhere behind his glassy eyes you see a flash of horror as the realization hits him; that he’s still there, still awake to witness the horrors he will commit. You wish you could tell him you’re sorry.

But then your body staggers away and he follows, shambling off in search of your next meal. And you realize with a cold jolt this is your life now. Endless torment as your body falls apart around your trapped mind, constantly running from one victim to the next with your trapped brethren shambling along beside you.

It’s not so bad living in the zombie apocalypse.

It’s far worse being one of the dead.

Alice Austin (she/her) writes a broad mix of fiction. Her main focus is horror, but she often dips into fantasy, humor, and occasionally sci-fi; anything with a speculative element is fair game. She and her partner live with an adorable menace of a cat.

“It’s Not So Bad Living in the Zombie Apocalypse” by Alice Austin © 2023