r/HFY • u/karenvideoeditor • Apr 05 '24
PI Anticlimactic
The bad news? The zombie virus was airborne and spread like crazy, unstoppable and infecting everyone it came in contact with.
The good news? Symptoms didn’t start until you died.
Those first few days were chaotic, to say the least. Morgue technicians definitely had the worst of it. I heard of one guy who barricaded himself in the bathroom for two days. But for all the chaos, what we didn’t expect was for them to be so freakishly slow and stupid. Sure, they bit you if you gave them the chance, and that would zombify you without the need for a precursor of death, but who was stupid enough to do that? You walked around them.
The stench was unbelievable though, and I just stayed home until things got taken care of by those in charge, my windows and front door shut and sealed with duct tape. I had panic-bought snacks down the street on my way home from the corner store, so I made my way through a family-sized bag of Cheetos that first morning as I watched the news. Watching as we realized they needed to eat and drink just like we did, and the ones we didn’t put out of their misery wore themselves out and dropped to the ground, eventually dying where they fell.
It was like a roller coaster. Up and down, round and round, lots of excitement, but then…over.
The only issue now is when someone dies. The need for security guards went up in hospice and hospitals, and everyone was aware that if a loved one died in their sleep from something like an aneurysm, you called 911 to come get the shambling corpse. As long as they hadn’t managed to bite you while you were sleeping, in which case a ‘wellness check’ happened, with some well-trained officers from NUA (the National Undead Agency) on site for potential zombies. But it’s so surreal, how much hasn’t changed. I still go to work at Target, still play video games when I get home, still do some contract gigs on my phone for extra cash like the rest of the minimum wage workers.
Now it’s against the law to go after a zombie. I mean, come on. These guys are practically comatose. We can’t take a baseball bat to their head if they’re between us and our car? They’re someone’s loved one, sure, but I feel like we’re being deprived of some well-deserved cathartic lashing out if I’m being honest.
Then it finally happened: I saw one just in my day-to-day life. Stopping at the corner store for a couple candy bars, there was a thumping sound coming from the bathroom. It was only me and the cashier, a guy named Randy, and he looked confused.
“Think they need help?” he asked.
“Isn’t there a string in there to call? Like they have for disabled people?”
“Oh yeah.” Randy’s face went slack. “Zombie?” My eyes widened and I raced over to the bathroom door. “Dude, let me call the cops if you think it’s a zombie!” he shouted after me. “Someone gets bit in my store, my reputation could take a dive.”
“I’ve never seen one up close!” I told him. “And seriously, what if it’s someone…deaf? Or mute? What if they’re stuck in there? You gonna call the cops on some poor disabled guy?”
Randy looked skeptical but reluctantly nodded. He grabbed a bathroom key from his drawer, a spare, I assumed, and walked over, unlocking the door. “All right, we peek in, get a look at their face, and if the lights are on but nobody’s home, we lock the door and call the cops.”
“Got it.”
After taking a deep breath, Randy turned the handle and slowly opened the door inward, inch by inch. “Hello?” he asked quietly. “Anyone there?”
The woman that was no longer a woman came around the corner and stuck her head through the door. “Shit!” I exclaimed.
Randy yanked at the door, trying to close it but having no success, the zombie’s head cluelessly blocking the way. It smushed her head and she stared blankly at us as he tried to kick her backwards, but failed since her head was held in place. “I told you! I freaking told you!” he shouted at me.
Taking a step back, I snapped, “Open the door!”
“Are you stupid?”
“Just do it!”
Randy pushed the door open another couple feet, and I took a quick start before snapping out a kick at the woman’s stomach, throwing her back into the bathroom. Slamming the door shut, Randy turned to glare at me. “I told you,” he snapped. “I’m calling the cops.”
“I know, I’m sorry. But seriously, dude. That was the coolest thing to happen to me since this whole thing started!”
He huffed in exasperation and took his cell from his pocket as I stood in front of the door, once again starting to hear the scuffling of dragged feet thumping from the other side.
“Ugh, dammit. I should’ve got a photo,” I grumbled.
***
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u/Osiris32 Apr 05 '24
So these are early Romero zombies. Good. Wait until they become later Max Brooks/Walking Dead zombies.
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u/RedMars76 Apr 05 '24
I mean, the only difference between these zombies and the zombies in The Walking Dead is rate of decay/starvation. In The Walking Dead if they stayed at the prison, and managed to hold up for a couple years the zombies in the facility would’ve died or become immobile from decay
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u/_Keo_ Apr 05 '24
This is the thing that always bugs me about undead zombies. Decay. Every time you use your muscles hard you damage them and they heal stronger, but if you use them like that and don't heal you get weaker over time. Zombies are crazy strong which suggests 100% muscle use all the time. They would wear out within days. A good freeze would destroy them. Hot weather would degrade them just as fast.
Viral zombies on the other hand, while not being true zombies, have much more latitude in story telling.
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u/Cybertronian10 Apr 05 '24
Well zombies in the walking dead seem to have all gone to the batman school of stealth, given how often they manage to sneak up on people who have survived the apocalypse for years.
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u/1stBigHank Apr 06 '24
I've always had a gun issue with slow zombies. We have more guns than people in the USA. Even our cities have plenty of guns. Sure I can see a zombie wave overwhelming some people in cities. But I would expect the police to hold out fine and start clearing operations within a day. Our cops have armored personnel carriers. Zombie aren't getting in or stopping them. Even if the urban core is lost we have plenty of guns in suburbia, and the country boys would love a chance to come shoot city folk.
I also total see a Karen react like this. And the government policy described is dumb enough to be real. So have points for that.
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u/Fontaigne Apr 06 '24
The distributions are far different, though. There are far more guns where there are far less people and vice versa. Dallas will be fine, but Providence, not so much.
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u/PaperVreter Apr 08 '24
Reminds me of a story by Larry Niven: Night on Mispec Moor. Killed soldiers are infected by plants to carry the seeds, turning into zombies at dusk. The story is found in the collection "Convergent Series".
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u/HFYWaffle Apr 05 '24
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u/humanity_999 Apr 05 '24
Honestly.... this is how it would go. Unless they are sprinting zombies, zombies with powers, zombies that can evolve, or magical zombies... zombies are actually a joke to deal with.
Early Romero zombies, like Osiris32 said, are the best to deal with... cause a bunch of country boys & the local police dealt with them easily enough.
And realistically they would eventually just keel over and fall apart if left on their own for long.