Zombie Drabble #383 “Mindset”

I caught the kids playing with bones. Leg bones for hockey sticks, a skull for a ball. I made them knock it off. They didn’t understand why. They’re just zombie bones, Dad.

I don’t know why it bothered me as much as it did. Everyone’s adjusting, changing, adapting to the way things are now, but not me. I look at the handfuls of rotting dead we find pushing at our stockade walls every morning and I still see people. Horrifically mutilated, cursed and pained even in death, but people.

They won’t trust me with guard duty. I don’t blame them.

Zombie Drabble #382 “Cashmere Redux”

The blond girl was ladling out ‘Apocalypse Surprise’. It was all they ate: whatever cans the scouting parties had found that day scrounging in the ruins of grocery stores and houses, mixed together and slow-cooked over a low fire.

The children were fed first, and then the pregnant women. By the time the men got through the line to her, she was scraping the bottom of the pot. One young, confident scout winked as she doled out a tiny portion and said, “That’s okay, babe, food ain’t everything. I got other needs too.”

She shot him a withering look. “Inappropriate.”

Zombie Drabble #381 “Good God, Y’all”

The patrol was two days overdue before we went looking for them. We found them strung up on telephone poles at the edge of town: a warning.

We knew there was another group of survivors nearby, but hadn’t run into them before. Harvey had a cool head, he wouldn’t have started something unnecessarily. So they were hostile, whoever they were.

What do we do? Try to make peace? They’ve made it clear they don’t want it. Move away? To where?

Better to fight now, while they think we’re weak, scared. I just wish we had Harvey to lead the assault.

Zombie Drabble #380 “Bargaining”

I’m seeing things. It’s the fever, making me see things.

The Carpini kids are not eating their dog in my front yard. There hasn’t been a steady stream of helicopters flying and hovering over town. The apartment building on the corner hasn’t been burning for an hour with no fire/rescue response at all. None of it’s really happening.

The Nyquil will put me out, let me sleep this off. It’s just the goddamn flu. I’ll wake up tomorrow and everything will be back to normal again, none of those hallucinations will have been real.

Please, let it not be real.

Zombie Drabble #379 “White Lady”

I used to do coke.

And when I say I used to do coke, I mean I used to do a whole lot of coke.

I got through that first week tweaked all to hell, heart racing, no sleep, burning the candle at both ends and the middle to boot, while I watched so many others get exhausted and give up and get themselves eaten. Coke’s why I’m still alive.

I’ve been out for weeks; won’t be any more, probably. I don’t know the formula, don’t know any survivors who do. Anyway, getting caught with drugs now gets you shot.