A little story I wrote all the way back in 2013 (!). It’s experimental, so I used different colors for the two speakers instead of having dialogue tags or action tags.
Joe.
Go away.
Joe.
Go. Away.
We’re facing a zombie apocalypse.
I’m facing a chemistry exam. Now go away.
I’m not kidding.
I’m not either. Go away and let me study.
But we’re facing a zombie apocalypse!
Mike, zombies are characters in horror stories. They are not real. The zombie apocalypse is a literary trope about alienation and … uh … literary stuff. Look, this is a silly conversation, so let me study and we can have fun with it after my exam Wednesday. Okay?
But — but — there won’t be any med schools soon.
Mike, let me introduce you to Joseph’s Wager.
Joseph’s — ?
See, I have a choice of studying or not. If you’re right and I study, then I’ll regret wasting my time studying but not for long because I’ll soon be dead and zombified. If you’re right and I don’t study, then I’ll have fun in the few days left before I’m dead and zombified. But if I’m right, and I study now, then I’ll get to go to med school and become a doctor and be rich and famous instead of flipping hamburgers like my annoying baby brother.
That was just a summer job.
Whatever. If I’m right and I don’t study, then I don’t get into med school and I might as well be a zombie because being a doctor is the only thing I want to do in life. Okay?
Please … please … I’m begging you … just listen to me.
All right. I’ll listen for fifteen minutes and then you will go away and let me study. Deal?
I guess so … you didn’t read my emails, did you?
What emails? I’ve been studying for the last week.
Okay, let me fill you in. A month or so ago, there were riots in a couple of villages in Malawi. Some aid workers were killed. It made the news, I guess, kind of, but I didn’t hear about it. They sent someone to investigate and they didn’t come back.
They who sent someone?
I don’t know. The Malawi government, I guess. This was all reported on the Internet just recently so the details are kind of obscure.
The Internet. Wonderful. Get on with it.
Okay, okay. So there were riots in Malawi. Then there were riots in other villages and other towns and finally cities all over eastern Africa. It was spreading. It was starting to be noticed internationally. And people were saying that it wasn’t really riots or a revolution or anything like that, people were just going crazy and attacking anyone they saw, with their hands and, well, and teeth.
Like zombies. Right. Is this like the cannibals in the Superdome?
Come on, you said you’d listen.
Okay, okay, get on with it.
A couple of weeks ago I saw mentions of this on the Internet, but people mostly reacted like you: oh, this is exaggerated, this is just stereotyping Africans as cannibals, as wild beasts, that kind of thing. No one believed it was really happening the way it was reported. But it wasn’t reported much, anyway, because what bloggers there were there stopped blogging pretty quickly. Everyone thought the authorities were cracking down and shutting them up.
But you don’t think so.
Not any more, no. I did then. But then there was a riot last week in Mecca. The same kind of thing — attacking with bare hands, with teeth. The Saudis sent in troops, tried to hush it up, get people patched up and sent home before too much got out —
How do you hush things up when you sent in troops?
Just deny it, how else? Not a lot of independent reporters or even bloggers around Mecca. People were saying on the Internet the Saudis were shooting rioters in the streets, but it still sounded like cannibals in the Superdome, so nobody really believed it.
Good for them. But you’re going to tell me they’re wrong.
They are wrong. A few days ago riots broke out in the banlieus around Paris — the Muslim banlieus, like where people would return to from Mecca — same kind of thing, attacking with bare hands and teeth. The gendarmes kind of stayed back, kind of like when they were burning all those cars, remember? They know how dangerous it is to try to go in there. So again, people kind of figured, well, we understand, they’re mad about how they’ve been treated so they’re rioting —
And you know better.
I do know better! That’s why I came in here! Because yesterday there was a riot in Brooklyn! Same thing — bare hands and teeth. They shot a man dead — shot him in the head, I will note — because he jumped a cop and started biting him and wouldn’t stop so they shot him. There was a big uproar about that. And now — right now — there’s a report on the New York Post web page about a riot in New York Methodist Hospital — they say some of the victims from the riot yesterday are attacking doctors and other patients —
Give me that! Let me see … ‘Chaotic scene as patients flee’ … ‘Police have been called to the New York Methodist Hospital’ … ‘He must have gone mad, he was just shrieking and clawing and biting at the nurse’ … ‘Possible case of atypical rabies’ … atypical rabies?
Well, it isn’t real rabies, but they go crazy and bite like they’re rabid. Atypical rabies.
Yeah, okay. ‘Mayor denies claims of zombie outbreak’ — so you’re not the only one thinking of zombies.
No, I’m not. A lot of people are looking at this and saying this looks like the beginning of a zombie apocalypse —
Are they? What are they planning to do about it?
Well … nothing, really. I mean, most of them don’t believe it, it’s just a joke to them. And then those who do believe, half of them figure we’re all doomed anyway and the other half are planning to head for the hills. Which is what we should be doing —
What, you and me? What about the ‘rents?
Them too! We need to go someplace safe! Now, before the zombies —
Have you told them this?
Um, no, actually. You’re older and almost a doctor —
I’m a pre-med. I’m a long way from a doctor.
Whatever. You’re the closest we have to a doctor in the family. I figure they’d listen to you when they wouldn’t listen to me. You do believe me, now, don’t you?
I believe you believe this. But Mike, there has to be another explanation. Zombies are, are … made up. Really. The dead don’t walk!
How do you know? No, listen to me. I mean, I’ve been thinking about this since yesterday, trying to think how we know about zombies — why we know, I mean. And I’m thinking that, well, you know there’s a worm or something that takes over an ant’s brain and makes it climb up on a grass blade so it gets eaten by a bird?
I’ve heard about that, yes.
And you know the human race almost went extinct about seventy thousand years ago?
Yeah, heard that too …
So, what if — just humor me for a minute — what if there’s a, a something out there in the African jungle that can do the same thing to a human being, just take over his brain and make him attack other people, even keep him moving when he’s really dead — don’t look at me that way, you know you can make a frog’s leg move using electricity! No matter how dead it is! So say there’s something like that in the African jungle. Seventy thousand years ago some human beings ran into it, and spread it around, and about wiped out the species.
Why didn’t it wipe out the species? How could they have stopped a zombie apocalypse? Come on, Mike!
They ran away. They ran far away, some of them ran all the way to Europe and Asia and even further. But they started burying their dead. They gave their dead grave goods, like they thought the dead might be hungry. And sometimes they tied them up before burying them, like they thought maybe the dead might get up and walk. Humans did that. Neanderthals didn’t. But then, Neanderthals weren’t in Africa when it happened.
And what happened to the zombies, then?
They didn’t run as fast. They aren’t as smart as we are, or as fast. They got left behind and then they, I don’t know, rotted or got eaten, or something. But the reservoir is always there, and sometimes humans encounter it again, and everyone around them has to run away. So the story of zombies, the fear that the dead just might walk, never really goes away.
That’s … kind of plausible, in a horrible sort of way. I don’t believe it … but … I want to look at those emails. If events in the past weeks have really played out as you’re saying … well … I don’t think it’s your brain-eating worms, but it does look like a highly contagious disease that causes violent dementia and has a very short incubation period.
Zombies.
Okay, fine. Close enough for government work.
We have to go tell Mom and Dad, then, we have to prepare —
Let me read the emails first. I’m not doing anything until I’m sure this is real.
And then? Come on, man, there isn’t much time!
And then … I’ll try to help you and Mom and Dad get to safety but … I can’t just run away. Someone has to … to fight the disease. I’m not going.
Joe, that’s crazy! You can’t fight zombies, you know you can’t!
Do I? You can’t fight them in the movies — well, you can’t fight them and win — because if you won it wouldn’t be a horror movie. But real life may be different. If there even are any zombies. Sheesh, you’ve got me doing it too. Look, just leave me be for an hour or so while I read your emails and the websites. You go make yourself useful — get the real story on that guy Clay in Brooklyn.
Clay. Right.
So?
Tell me about Clay first.
Argh!
Okay, Clay got back yesterday, probably from France according to the neighbors. The authorities are still checking so who knows when we’ll get a definitive answer. He lived alone. He seemed okay day before yesterday. He went to his apartment and nobody heard anything until yesterday morning when he started howling and pounding on his door. From the inside.
And that’s why you say the, the —
Zombies.
The victims aren’t as smart as we are.
Right, he didn’t remember how to open the door. That’s frigging stupid. Dogs can learn to open doors.
Let’s hope the victims can’t. Can’t learn, I mean.
That’s an awful thought there … Anyway, Clay was howling and carrying on so the neighbors called the cops. Two cops came, tried to talk him down, couldn’t do it of course, and had the super open the door. Clay charges out, attacks the cops, the super, and a kid who was watching the festivities. Damn near killed one of the cops and the kid before the other cop blew his head off.
Spattering blood and brains all over everybody so even if his saliva wasn’t contagious they all got infected anyway.
That would be my guess, yes. The kid and the injured cop were admitted to the hospital; the cop started attacking people about four hours ago now, and the kid started about an hour after that.
About a thirty-hour incubation, then. Can’t count on that though … any news on the other cop and the super?
No, but I’m sure we’ll hear about them. Soon. Not to mention everybody who got infected at the hospital. Look, we have to tell Mom and Dad and we have to get out of here!
I read your emails and your links. If there isn’t a, an, an outbreak of something, then someone’s gone to a whole lot of trouble to make it up. So I’ll accept, provisionally, that there’s an epidemic in Africa, probably in parts of Europe too, and spreading to America. Clay won’t be the only traveller who got bitten or something over there. Now, the one saving grace is that this thing isn’t airborne. I read all the reports very carefully, and there were people close enough that the wind would have carried the infection to them … they ran away because they were afraid of the smell. And they were still alive a week later, so I’d guess — I hope anyway — that they aren’t infected. If they are, we really are doomed.
We’re doomed anyway if we don’t run away.
Where do we run to? Seriously! Look, we don’t have a summer cottage in the Adirondacks. We don’t even have a motorhome, not even an SUV. We’d have to rent something, and if things really went to hell, would the owner really let us stay? Or would he throw us out and move himself and his family in. Plus what would we eat anyway? If something like this really got started — it doesn’t have to be zombies to cause the collapse of civilization. The Black Death only killed a third of the European population, but it destroyed their society, and they were a lot less vulnerable than we are. The survivors at least knew how to raise crops and things, and we don’t. I don’t. You don’t. Most Americans don’t. We have to fight this because if our society dies, we die with it.
How? How do we fight them when just touching them is death? We can’t fight! We don’t even have guns!
Ah, well, I was thinking about that. We’re not so very helpless. After all, we beat this once, if you’re right about what happened seventy thousand years ago.
Seventy thousand years ago we ran away. There’s nowhere to run today!
Did we run away? Or did we fight? No, you listen this time. Think of a man, a Stone Age man. Refugees from the next tribe over come running in, saying they were attacked by zombies and that everyone who got bitten joined the zombies in the attack. He hears the zombies — yeah, I’m using the word — howling so he tells his family to run. But he takes the rear-guard, right? Can’t let those things chase down his wife and children. But he doesn’t dare let them touch him either, not after what the refugees told him. So he climbs a tree. And then he yells at the zombies to get their attention, and when they try to climb the tree — if they try to climb the tree, which I’m not sure they could — he’s stabbing down at them with his spear. Stabbing them in the head, because that’s closest. And what do you know, it works! So he gets down, catches up with his family, spreads the word. Everyone learns that you can survive, you can kill them, you just have to be smart. We can be smart too. We can fight this. Which is a good thing because we have to.
Um, Joe, that’s really inspiring, but there’s a distinct shortage of trees around here. Climbable trees, anyway. And no spears, either.
No climbable trees, no, but we have climbable houses.
Houses! Are you nuts! How would we … we could just climb up a ladder, couldn’t we? And just kick the ladder away if they were too close — it’s not like they’d be smart enough to pick up the ladder and climb up after us …
You’re getting it, aren’t you? The neighborhood’s lit up, even at night, so they couldn’t invade without being seen, not if there were a few, let’s call them watchmen, on the roofs, with sirens to set off if any are sighted. Then they try to attract attention, keep the, the, oh hell, the zombies distracted while everybody makes for the rooftops. And then everybody sits and waits for the police, or the army, or somebody to come deal with the zombies.
And there won’t be many zombies to deal with, if we can keep this epidemic from ramping up. That’s the key — keep it from ramping up at the beginning, and you have a lot less of a problem.
Wait a minute. We have roofs to sit on, but there aren’t too many of those in Manhattan. And you know this thing’s gonna make it into Manhattan.
They don’t have roofs, no, but they have other things. Apartment doors that are built to resist burglars will work pretty well to resist zombies too. Remember, Clay couldn’t get out of his apartment until someone let him out. Maybe he could have beaten down the door, eventually, but that gives plenty of time to evacuate the floor. Or the whole building, if they couldn’t block the stairwells. That’s only a problem in old walkups, though, I think. Modern buildings have elevators, which you can call to an upper floor and stick a chair in the door, and stairwells with fire doors, which you can barricade. All very against the fire code, of course, but who cares at this point?
See, a modern apartment building is an absolute fortress against zombies! Not against normal people — if normal people are determined to get you, and you block the stairs and elevators, they can set the building on fire, if nothing else. Not zombies, though. If you can keep the residents from bringing the infection in, you can protect the whole building from … I guess you’d say, roving zombies. If there are any roving zombies, which we’ll try to avoid.
You didn’t just think of this just now, did you?
No, actually. A lot of it I’ve thought about when I was watching the movies or reading the books. You know, the way you always tell the idiots in the movie, “look behind the door, stupid!” Me, I think about the defensive possibilities of apartment buildings. Our roof — that I did just think of, but it’s kind of obvious, really. Even if zombies can climb, as long as there aren’t very many, you can keep them from climbing on the roof. Kind of like guarding the battlements really, except zombies don’t shoot arrows at you, or set the house on fire.
Have you thought what you do with the zombies themselves, though? I mean, in the books and movies you shoot them in the head, but that’s when they’ve taken over and there’s nothing else to do about them.
I don’t know. Lock them up somewhere, I guess. I don’t know what else you can do with them. They might be curable, after all. And we can’t just execute them… Hey, I know, let all the druggies out of prison and put the zombies in instead! Plenty of room if we can keep the rate of infection down!
Yeah, okay, great. But this is all pie-in-the-sky because right now the epidemic is spreading. What can we do about it?
We can spread the word. I have my old blog that I haven’t updated in six months. You have your blog — what’s it about, dinosaurs? We have twitter accounts. We have lots of email friends. Come on kid, let’s get to work.
