Field of Corpses

Walking the pace I was normally made my legs get sore, but now that I wasn't so alive, I didn't feel a thing. I didn't even feel pain when my skin would split open and gush blood.

The first time it happened I completely lost it. I just sat alone in my room when something caught my eye. I glanced over at my arm, and sure enough my skin was splitting. It didn't hurt one bit, which is something that freaked me out more. I saw my skin tear and form a huge gash, but I felt nothing. I thought I must to have been dreaming, but then I remembered I couldn't sleep. Zombies never slept, which I guess explained my Insomnia for the past two years. It let me know I was dying that much sooner, I just never realized it.

Being a zombie had its upsides though. Not being able to sleep meant I never got tired. That way I could keep going and never stop. Which answered my question, a long time ago, when I wondered how zombies got from New York ended up down here in Utah. We never slept, we never got tired, and we never felt pain.

We managed to get hungry though, and I still felt several human emotions that no other zombie could, but being hungry was always the worst. With me, I got a mixture of a craving for flesh like the others, yet I also wanted human food. It was never easy though; it never tasted good. No matter what I ate, it always tasted nasty, which is why I never wanted to feast on a human or animal. It was getting time though for when that would be my only meal. I wasn’t giving up on my journey, but I still knew it was a possibility of it not working out. I was probably going to fully turn into a zombie by the time I even came close to another half-dead, and it would be my food. It was kind of scary to think about, actually.

I passed by a gas-station, and noticed that none of the windows had been broken. It was odd to me, because every building was destroyed somehow. Back when people were still people, it was very chaotic. Half of the population was zombies, while the other half was dying slowly, or going to be killed. Everyone’s way of survival was to break into stores and take everything they wanted. I was one of the only ones who was smart about it.

I walked slowly through the mall, watching all the dying humans hurry through the stores, taking all the electronic devices they wanted. I scoffed at the idea because they were never going to have any use for those things. I knew they’d turn into a zombie or be eaten by one, so why the hell would they need a flat-screen television?

I, on the other hand, went to get things I knew I wanted and would have use for. I went straight into a Hot Topic and got all the band T-shirts I could find that I liked. I walked out with a box full, and a few CDs. I got all my piercings, and I made sure to get shoes and jewelry. I figured I wanted to look good when I died.

All the other zombies were in torn clothes and they all looked so awful. At the time, I wasn’t quite sure on my death-status, so I was still pretty alive. I thought that I was going to leave with Curt and get away. I never even once thought that I’d become a zombie too, and definitely not rare half-dead kind. I was as cocky as the other humans, I guess. I figured no zombie could touch me, and I would never become one.

None of my friends or family did for that matter. I remember they’d have ‘get-togethers’ every Sunday, and we’d talk of what we’d do when the zombie-situation got too out of hand. My grandma still had faith in our government, and the rest of my family had high hopes that the zombies would just die off. I always knew though; they didn’t know, but I was turning into one myself. I had to just sit back and pretend like I was concerned for our world. I never gave a fuck though! I hated the country, and I hated everyone in it. I was a miserable teenager who saw the end of our civilization coming. I knew what was going to happen, because I was one too.

I did care though when my family died. We were all rushing to the airport, and we had a great plan. We planned to fly away to another country and wait it out until our ‘wonderful’ government saved our country. Even though I knew it wasn’t going to happen, I didn’t want to stay behind and watch who was left of my friends die. I could have, though. I could have waited for them to become zombies so we could stay together, but I knew that wasn’t how it worked, so I agreed with myself to get on that plane.

It was our worst idea though. My family didn’t stop to think that maybe the zombies could finally ’smarten’ up and break through the airport gates and walls. As soon as we got in, it’s like we were ambushed from every side.

As my family screamed, cried, and tried to run, I stood in my place and watched all of the horror. Zombies were fierce fully tearing heads off of bodies that belonged to security and police. Sickly, I laughed at it. I always found it fascinating when a police officer would die. I hated cops, so seeing them finally being eaten alive by my kind of people, well… that was just fucking awesome. By the time I snapped out of it, I saw my mom looking at me as if I were Satan. I had a smile on my face as blood was being splattered all over, and my family was being killed.

My mom somehow knew though; she could see through me that I wasn’t just getting a kick out of this. She saw how the zombies didn’t come after me, and she noticed that I was desensitized to the whole thing. She had to have figured out I was dying, so she pleaded for me to help her with just one horrified look in her eyes. As much as I didn’t care about anything at that moment, I knew I should try to help my mom. She knew I would too, and she knew I would never kill. Somehow, everyone knew I would never be the type.

With one last look at one of my family member’s heads rolling across the floor in front of me, I turned to my mom and slowly walked up to her. She was on top of a shelf inside the souvenir store. I’m surprised it held up with all the havoc around the place. I stood at the ground looking up at her, and I nodded for her to get down. She did so while closing her eyes tightly, and she hopped off. I kept her behind me and was willing to fight off any zombie coming for her. I always knew that for some reason, no matter how her and I ended up, we needed to be there for each other. I was the one that was supposed to protect her now.

We ran to my grandma’s car, and drove away so fast that no zombie could even come close to catching up. I was the zombie who could manage to sit in a small space with a live human and not be tempted to kill them, so my mom was safe. Her expression showed differently though.

She was as far against the car door as could be, and she stared at me with such horror. If I would’ve cared, it would hurt my feelings or pissed me off, but instead, I just kept driving. I threw her off though when I turned on the radio. I could see her body tense as my arm reached towards the stereo. I kind of smirked to myself, then turned up the volume. Surprisingly, my favorite band came on and I started singing loudly. For some reason, they always came on whenever my mom and I were in the car together.

Even though she was scared of me, she had to have known she was safe. I hurried her into our house, as soon as we pulled up, and I hid her in her back room. I promised her that nothing could ever get to her as long as I was around, because zombies never seemed to attack other zombies. It just didn’t happen. It took weeks to convince her though, that I wouldn’t try to kill her.

It was almost half a year that she managed to stay alive in that house with me. I died a little more each day, and by then my skin was rotting away and so were all my feelings. Love was faded, and hate seemed to vanish. Happiness never saw the light of day, and fear didn’t exist within me anymore. I was now half-dead, and my mom could see this. It was killing her though; seeing me die. It only made her more angry with everything, and finally one day it all got to her.

I had left the house, going to stock up on more food, when she had started crying. She was a mess, and she was turning her room into one. She was making so much noise, a zombie had heard her. With all the object she was throwing, she broke a window. Before she could even see it coming, a zombie crawled through her window and ate her. I got back just in time to see her on the floor, being mauled by one of my kind. It angered me, so I did the best I could; I attacked him, and I took his existence away. I was too late, though. My mom was bleeding to death on the floor, and she was suffering.

I didn’t like seeing her like that; she was my mom, and even though I was a zombie, I still felt sadness. She stared up at me, and silently begged me to kill her. I saw it in her eyes, so I did the only thing I could think of.

It’s pretty lame to me now, but then I thought it was the right thing to do. I dug a hole in our backyard, and I put my mom at ease. Once she was in the ground, I managed to shed a tear. I remember my last words to her; “If you still believe in Heaven, and it really exists, save a place for me in case I don’t go to Hell.”

As soon as she was gone, I went to Curt’s. We sat on his roof and that’s when I told him about my dying. That’s when everything started…

I got closer to the gas-station and peered in through the strange windows. I saw nothing in there, but the leftover food that had never been bought. Even though it sounded disgusting, my stomach was still kicking me and telling me I should fill it. As much as I didn’t want to, I knew I should to keep the alive part of me living.

I reluctantly grabbed a rock off the side of me, and threw it at the window as hard as I could. It shattered instantly, and I was astounded by my own strength. I never understood why zombies were so strong, but it was one of my favorite parts about being one.

I stepped through the now open space, and walked into the quiet store. I heard nothing, and I saw nothing either. It still wasn’t right, but the junk-food isle was calling me. As nasty as it was going to be, I knew that my stomach would stop pounding. I hated when it did that; that was the only thing that still had human feeling, so it always made me cringe when I hadn’t eaten for days.

I hurriedly shoved chips into my mouth, and closed my eyes tightly at the taste. I wanted to spit them out, but I forced myself to go on. By the time my stomach was finally full, I had bags and wrappers all around me. I was still hungry though, and I couldn’t push myself to eat that nasty junk food anymore.

As I went to leave, I heard a faint noise come from somewhere inside the store. I turned quickly to see nothing. I figured a zombie had stumbled in here to check it out, but I saw nothing. It caught my interest though, so I followed the noise the back of the gas-station.

I quietly crept through the back door, and I saw something very unusual. A light was turned on in the back room, and it seemed as if though someone was hiding out and living in here. I smelled around and could tell someone was definitely here. Instead of getting excited about my find, I grew hungrier instead.

I didn’t like it, but I couldn’t help it. At that moment I wanted something more than junk-food in my stomach. I had a sudden craving for flesh and blood. It wasn’t like me, but I accepted my changing life-style. Before I could look around the room any more, I saw a man under a desk.

Poor guy didn’t realize his leg was sticking out a bit too far, and he didn’t know how zombie I actually was. Before he could even pull his leg back in, it was in my grasp and torn off his body in seconds.

He was screaming with pain, and I couldn’t control myself. I was eating away at this man’s leg, and I didn’t care how messy I was getting. He’d whimper every time he could hear his own flesh being torn off his leg, and he’d beg each time I devoured the bloody limb. I got down to the bone, and that’s when the man went hysterical.

His crying and screaming was irritating the hell out of me, and I was still hungry, so I went after him again. This time though, I told him something before I began ripping his body to shreds. It made him beg and cry, but I really didn’t care.

“Let me just put you out of your misery before the zombies get to you.”