The Only Good Zombie Is A Dead One (...Short Story...)

**BillTheButcher** · 02-Jun-2011

The Zombocalypse struck next Friday.

All over the world, the dead rose from their graves, even in those nations where the dead were cremated and had no graves to rise from. They rose though they were too decomposed to rise, kicking and clawing through their wooden coffins and the earth over their graves, or the concrete doorways of their burial crypts, even though the impact should have broken their rotting bodies into pieces.

All over the world, the dead shambled towards the living, arms outstretched, drooling even though their salivary glands were dead so that they couldn’t produce saliva; and moaning, even though they were dead and so didn’t breathe and therefore shouldn’t be moaning.

All over the world, then, the zombies moaned and drooled and snacked (but only snacked) on the living, so that they, in turn, then began snacking lightly on more of the living. All over the world, militaries who would have thought nothing of tearing apart enemy armoured divisions were overwhelmed by a few rotting corpses staggering around. All over the world, bulldozer operators who might have shovelled the dead back into the ground abandoned their vehicles and ran away, truck drivers who could have turned the zombies to paste beneath the wheels of their giant rigs gave up the ghost and joined the undead ranks, and civilisation tottered and began to fall.

Enter the heroes. There were five of them – five precisely. The first was the Tough Guy, a survivalist who had prepared well ahead for the Zombocalypse and was loaded down with all the attitude, training and aggression he needed. The second was the Stupid Moron Who Almost Gets Everybody Killed. The third was the Beautiful Woman, the hope for the continuation of the human race. The fourth was the Sneaky Cowardly Guy, easily identified by his whining. And the fifth was the Everyman, who doubled as the True Hero.

Our quintet went first to a local gun store to load up with weapons. The gun store, of course, hadn’t been looted by the 1,987,654 other living humans in the city who had got the same idea. Nor had its owner, who, presumably, also wanted to live, defended his store with the 124 shotguns, 78 hunting rifles, 32 converted assault rifles, or 386 assorted handguns on his premises. Our quintet loaded themselves up with the weapons and then went on to a mall, similarly deserted, where they packed their pickup truck full of food, drink and sanitary napkins. The Beautiful Woman was about to take along some birth control pills as well but was stopped by the Tough Guy.

Then they drove out of town, because they’d heard that there were no zombies in Alaska, if only they could get there; it was too cold for them, and, besides, Sarah Palin spent her spare time shooting any stray zombies from helicopters while not shooting Russians from her living room window. On the way they found only a few scattered vehicles, of course; certainly no bumper to bumper traffic jams caused by 654,321 cars frantically attempting to escape the city. They could also stop to fuel their truck at a petrol pump. Unfortunately, they were attacked by the pump’s attendants, who were now zombies, and the Tough Guy had to shoot these Dead Fucks through the head to put them down.

Soon afterwards they came across ten zombies forming an immovable mass in the middle of the street. The Stupid Moron, who was driving, swerved to avoid them and drove into the ditch. In order to conserve ammunition, the Tough Guy and the Everyman destroyed these Fiends and Ghouls by bashing their heads in with crowbars, while the Coward snivelled and whined. In the process of all this Ghoul-whacking, both the Tough Guy and the Everyman got liberally splashed with zombie blood, but, of course, weren’t infected with anything. They didn’t even stink enough afterwards to disturb anyone.

They were trying to get the truck out of the ditch when the Evil Militia arrived, captured them and dragged them off to the Compound of the Grand Dictator, who was planning to rape the Beautiful Woman while turning the other four into slaves. On discovering this, the Tough Guy suggested a plan to escape. This plan involved climbing over the roofs of the camp buildings to the armoury, the most heavily guarded building in camp, breaking it open, stealing all the weapons and fighting their way to the vehicle park, there to steal a truck and destroy all the others to prevent pursuit.

Quite predictably, this magnificent plan was betrayed to the Grand Dictator by the Coward. Now, quite naturally, the Grand Dictator kept a group of captive zombies penned up in a part of the camp for his amusement and to dispose of unwanted people. The Grand Dictator intended to feed the entire survivor group, except for the Beautiful Woman, and including, as always in these cases, the Coward, to the zombies. However, the Tough Guy bent apart the iron rods on the window of their cell block, single-handedly killed 32 militiamen, broke out the others and carried out his original plan. In the course of this, the Coward tried to stop them by breaking out the zombies from their pen, whereupon they promptly ate him and the Stupid Moron, who clumsily got in the way.

The three remaining survivors drove north in their captured truck, until they reached the sea. Of course there was a launch tethered there just for them, fully fuelled and provisioned, just waiting to be sailed to Alaska and safety. But before they could set off on it they were attacked by zombies and the Tough Guy was bitten. Realising his fate was sealed, he sacrificed himself by turning his truck into a firebomb which incinerated the attacking zombie hordes.

The Everyman and the Beautiful Woman, together and alone at last, sailed tearfully but with dawning hope in their hearts across the ocean to Alaska, navigating easily across the open sea even though neither of them had operated a boat of this size before. And they made landfall on a pristine, zombie-free shore, with happiness theirs for the taking.

And then a polar bear ate them.