Civilization collapsed during my first AA meeting. I watched my Day One coin move from hand to hand as members passed it around the room, blessing it while Lonnie acknowledged his character defects to the group. He relayed a story about the time his then-wife installed blinds on their rear windows to keep the kids from seeing his shameful journey to the detached garage for pokes from a pint of Five O’Clock vodka, straight up. As Lonnie grew used to public speaking, words confined by frustration and shame tumbled from his mouth like breathless accusations. Not even the sharp cracks of gunfire outside could stop his testimony long after he failed to capture our attention.
Heads turned toward the muffled commotion as though we could see through the walls and a nervous wave of energy pulsed through the room, hot on the heels of my Day One coin. Members stirred, looking at each other as new events overtook the meeting’s agenda, awaiting an explanation that wouldn’t require participation beyond an understanding nod, such as a backfiring engine or neighborhood kids with fireworks.
The coin returned to my hands as phones chimed alerts in scattered fashion, with the addition of the odd ringtone blaring tin melodies. I felt my phone vibrating in my pants pocket like a dirty secret. A text from Sam simply read: “CHUCKS.” Sam was the survival enthusiast and self-styled “patriot” of our friend group, regularly scanning the news to support his confirmation bias like a paladin seeking validation from virtue. But he wasn’t the self-centered type who cared about liberty as it applied to his interests only; Sam was old-school community-minded, waving the flag anywhere and for everyone who wanted to join the club…they needed no special requirements other than not to fuck things up. His text to me was a beacon to the storm shelter Chuck had constructed in the basement of his comic book shop after a funnel cloud spun a few shingles too close to his home last summer.
I tried calling both Sam and Chuck, only to receive “Service Unavailable” without so much as a busy signal. Calls around the room dropped like quiet departures. Full bars, no service…like a dead carrier that wouldn’t disconnect.
The group’s fellowship dissolved into wisps of self-interest, frustrated at the inability to contact someone outside the room for the first time in years…and maybe even lives, considering some of the younger members. We’d come here to talk and support each other, but that was when we could communicate with our loved ones, during times of peace, without the rising screams and gunfire from outside tempting civility into the darkness.
I found an open spot at the window with a few others and looked out to the yard and the street beyond as the summer daylight waned. Outside, a man raced past and I turned my head like a tardy spectator at a tennis match, my eyes failing to follow him as he faded into the dusk. There was some kind of growing distress throughout the neighborhood, but we needed more context to determine the cause…and if we should do something other than gaze from the windows like nosy neighbors.
A blonde woman wearing a faded pink tracksuit joined us at the window, younger and dolled up a bit more than the occasion warranted. She hadn’t spoken during the meeting, but I figured her addiction of choice was the multitude of painkillers floating through America’s working-class neighborhoods like bullets. The woman’s long fake nails clicked on a hard plastic phone case as she held it outward for the flashlight, but then all we could see was her reflection in the window, providing her ample opportunity to check herself out. Someone behind me dramatically cleared their throat and she put the phone away in a huff.
I swung my backpack over a shoulder and caught sight of another runner passing outside, this one screaming incomprehensibly. The hair on the back of my neck stood up for the first time, my gut queasy as though it held a pot of vending machine coffee.
Unfazed and determined to see the unfolding events outside, Pink Tracksuit tried to open the window, but her fingers slid across the glass. “It’s locked,” she said. “I’ll flip the latch-”
“Hang on a minute,” I warned.
She shrugged, right before a body crashed through the window, nearly landing on top of her in a blur of shredded fabric, hair, and skin…blood trails pooling below. Its gray body was humanoid but not like anyone I’d seen outside a monster movie, its rotting skin was scarred and stitched like a mannequin from the Ed Gein Collection. The thing landed on the edge of a folding table and then fell to its stomach on the scuffed tile floor.
Pink Tracksuit screamed, staggering backward across the table on all fours like a startled crab. It wasn’t so much breathing as sucking wind for its next throaty growl. If such a thing as the undead existed, this had to be it. Defying logic, there it was, much more active than anything dead I’d ever seen…and only “alive” in the sense of life being its eternal prey.
After bashing itself against the table, I thought it had knocked itself unconscious. But then it stood up before us under the sobering glow of the room’s institutional fluorescence, its beady eyes taking us all in like a marathon runner at a buffet. By then, most of the room had emptied into the turmoil outside, yet I couldn’t bring myself to run. I needed to believe what I was seeing before I could react.
The beast’s milky-white eyes fell on me and it launched itself forward in a rampage. At the same time, Pink Tracksuit misjudged her retreat, landing directly in the beast’s path, almost falling into its arms like a star-crossed lover. With a continuous, fluid motion, the beast grabbed Pink Tracksuit’s head by her long bottle-blonde hair, pulled it back, and sank its rotting teeth deep into her neck. She sank into a pool of her blood, tennis shoes squeaking across the floor like a deflated balloon as she slid downward.
That’s when I finally found my feet. Sprinting past tables of pamphlets propped near the front door and bursting into the evening air like a dog off the leash, I was barely beyond the porch when I tripped on a landscaping rock and landed on my stomach with an “oomph.” About to return to my feet as soon as my shocked body would allow, I spotted a discarded toy or trinket embedded halfway in the dirt: a small Magic 8-Ball, attached to a rusty key chain.
I heard a growl and spotted another tragic figure, an old lady with cataracts and a ratty skirt, not doing so great in death just as in life, circling the small yard seeking the source of my noisemaking like a bat looking for mosquitoes. A gunshot fired down the street and she limped away in that direction as though late for a train. I squeezed the Magic 8-Ball in my grip like a handshake for likely saving my life.
“Should I get the fuck out of here?” I asked it, turning it over to view the message window.
Signs Point to Yes.
I dropped the 8-Ball into my jeans pocket, where it settled to rest next to my freshly blessed Day One coin.
A couple more beasts appeared down the street but I evaded their line of sight, waiting until they found more stimuli to chase instead before I moved closer to my vehicle. The fact that it was getting too dark to see was a growing concern, especially with these things running around, who seemed to have no issues flinging themselves through the night like missiles.
This time more cautious of my steps, I returned to my feet and rushed to my van. Behind me, the creature inside the AA meeting appeared in the doorway of the hall, spotting me where I stood, under the glow of the corner streetlight like an actor about to give a monologue. Behind him stood Pink Tracksuit, mortally wounded but still standing, the gash on her neck open, but no longer bleeding, as she swayed from side to side like a lush on her lover’s arm. I wished them both a happy “life” together, but I wasn’t about to stay.
I reached the van and threw myself inside, watching them advance across the street with renewed determination. I shifted into gear by the time they’d reached the nearest sidewalk…just ahead and to my left. My foot slammed the gas and the van lurched forward like a mountain lion. I spun the wheel sharply and the tires jumped the curb, clipping my attackers and sending them both–along with my side mirror–flying off into the night. I laughed as adrenaline’s release numbed me, learning I could be both euphoric and horrified at once, the first of many lessons on this bizarre new road to recovery.
***
Ignoring stop signs and several other traffic laws, I turned hard at the next street, the van’s tires shrieking an argument with physics where the rubber met the road…a set of laws I couldn’t break. I straightened the wheel just in time to pull into the narrow driveway of my apartment building, skidding to a stop at the steps of the side porch, where my neighbor Dickey stood, holding the butt of a rifle to his hip.
“I’m locked and loaded, baby!” he exclaimed, pushing past me. “This is the moment I’ve been waiting for…The Great Reset!” Then he was running to the corner and looking up and down the block before heading left towards whatever turmoil he saw there. “I’m gonna send some people to Hell today!” he yelled to me, knowing I was still within earshot.
After he was out of sight, several gunshots erupted from that direction and I watched him reappear at the corner, fleeing towards the peaceful direction he’d first rejected, spraying bullets indiscriminately behind him as a group of undead gave chase. Some he shot, some he missed, but all remained in pursuit, like a swarm of angry bees. And from his raging shrieks and unintelligible uttering, Dickey was not as prepared for the “Great Reset” as well as he’d thought.
Safe inside my upper-floor studio apartment, I heard no news except for the robotic tone of official EBS evacuation announcements. Evacuation zones for “eligible sectors” were arranged based on location, but some people weren’t too keen on the government telling them what to do, and so gathered to protest in restless crowds…unwittingly exacerbating the body count once they met with more hostile crowds, mostly undead. Panic rippled in waves through town and civility hung by a thread as people either evacuated or hunkered down and hoped for resolution before their cupboards emptied…or until they were forced to defend their contents. But more and more, I couldn’t shake the dire feeling that no help was coming. How could I expect to get help from people who could barely help themselves, especially against a violent, rapidly-evolving epidemic?
As for myself, I hadn’t prepared for even the briefest of calamities. My apartment lacked mod cons such as closets, leaving most of my life’s inventory displayed on shelves like exhibits at a museum of underachievement. I possessed no tools other than a screwdriver set I’d bought while fighting inertia in a slow-moving checkout line and a light hammer that struggled to push hanging nails through two coats of paint. I’d lost everything in a stupid divorce to the daughter of a prominent townie and crash-landed in a small, cheap apartment, only to have another nightmare experience with a woman named Katie, a charming train wreck in the midst of a manic episode when we met. We were living in the moment while we surfed the first waves of infatuation…learning and exploring and loving. We spent our days of unemployment sharing half-bars of Xanax like two cartoon dogs with a strand of spaghetti. But then I quickly began to bore her and Katie was off with the first man who swiped right on her dating app profile. I’d seen it coming but watched it happen like a rubberneck passing a car crash, almost as though I was punishing myself for her behavior, for a crime I never committed. Of course, I blamed myself because my problems long predated Hurricane Katie and her chaotic rom-com life.
Not taking the opportunity to heal from either relationship-or the two decades of issues prior-my substance abuse worsened until I started waking up in strange places, like a nameless woman’s couch, or behind a gas station with the van still running and the driver-side door open with my pants cold and wet, not quite able to make it out of the vehicle to piss. I was on my way to rock bottom. And when you think you’ve hit rock bottom, you find there’s also a basement. I got into counseling and was prescribed an anti-anxiety drug, Aggrodol, that was recalled shortly afterward and I found myself forced to wean off yet another drug like a junkie, while suffering through the same severe withdrawal symptoms that got it pulled from production in the first place.
I’d waited long enough to hear from someone and the silence was crushing. It was time to head to Chuck’s. I packed what I felt would be of the most use, settling for a backpack filled with protein bars, water, and some extra changes of clothes, assuming the evacuation would be temporary and I’d be back in a few days, if only to resupply and ensure my home remained secured.
But then I wasn’t sure why I was so certain. The streets were littered with victims and the few I saw alive moved with no-nonsense determination, keeping a comfortable distance from others outside their “pod,” as few knew what was unfolding…or how far the situation spread. Animated corpses seemed far-fetched on their own accord, considering the lack of precedence beyond morbid imagination, but those who laid claim to certainty took to calling them “revenants,” after the mythical creatures that rose from the dead to haunt the living. “Zombie” seemed too elementary…too close to home…a term more appropriate for the Creature Features than the savage new reality of hardscrabble survival as apex predators were elbowed down a peg on the food chain…while exploring new feelings of sobering dismay.
I crossed my fingers and hoped Chuck’s neighborhood had fared better than mine, but I wouldn’t know for sure until I made it there alive.
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