1
You open your eyes.
You are lying on the cold, prickly tarmac of a road full of potholes. Your clothes are ripped and dirty, and your head hurts. There's also a vague ache of hunger in your stomach, but you can ignore that for now. It's harder to ignore the two semicircles of messy puncture-marks all across your forehead, and around the back of your skull.
Damn.
You got bitten by a zombie.
Looks like the ranks of the undead just conscripted another member!
2
The drifter's pleas fall on dead ears. You surrender to your hunger, launching yourself forward with surprising speed for a corpse and attaching your sharp little teeth about the crown of his head, you puncture his skull with ease and, ignoring his screams, secreting the special zombie saliva which will turn his brain into so much slurpable mush.
Quickly, as your spit dissolves his mind even faster than alcohol was already, the guy quiets down and you begin to suck greedily at the brain-juice within. But his yells have done their evolutionary work. You hear running footsteps behind you, and a couple of burly men stomp hurriedly over, running to either side of you to block your escape.
Bounty hunters!
"Get it!" one yells, and the other swings a baseball bat at your face with such force that your nose ends up coming out of the back of your head.
Needless to say, you didn't survive that...
3
"Well, then, I'll just have ta show you the ropes, won't I?" she says, seeming to enjoy the fact that she knows more than you. "Follow me."
She lurches quickly away from you, peers all around for a moment, then beckons you to follow before disappearing between the blackened skeletons of a bank and a bookshop.
4
Into the Thai restaurant you lurch, wandering through the kitchen door to where a huge oven stands open. The next thing you know, someone has shoved their elbow into the small of your back, propelled you into the oven, and closed the door. You can feel the sides red-hot already against your skin.
It takes a while for you to die, but fortunately, you pass out from the heat long before that. The last thing you see or hear in this world is a short, bearded guy wearing a grubby blue jumper, dancing around manically and shouting: "Ach, yes, Wullie's gonna eat tonight!"
Anyone for Kentucky Fried Zombie?
5
"Yes," you reply. "I just got bitten."
"Well, ya better be a fast learner then," she smirks at you. "Ya don't last long out here if yer not."
6
You are chewing on your bunny, enjoying the thick savor of the chocolate, when some maniac runs up behind and you sticks a weed-whacker in the back of your head.
Well, that sucks.
7
You step onto the creaking ladder and start your nervous and wobbly descent.
It seems to take hours, but at last your surroundings start to brighten, and you can make out various indistinct shapes moving around below you. As you approach the bottom, they notice you and scatter, then move closer to see you. They look human, though many have the skin sagging from their bones and all are a dull shade of gray, as far as you can tell in the half-light.
Finally, you reach the ground, and a tall zombie with a missing nose comes to greet you. "Welcome to the haven, fellow brother," he intones.
"Where am I?" you ask. It's a bit cliché, but it does the job.
"This is Zombie Haven. You're safe here."
Well done, you. Now shoo.
8
You think the library used to be a church or something. It's certainly large enough, and the windows are long, though the glass in them has all been broken.
There is already someone here, pulling books off the shelves next to the "spiritualism" marker. He glances at the titles, then tosses them aside. As you watch him curiously, he seems to find what he is looking for: a large black-bound tome with, embossed in gold on the cover:
On the Turning of Undead
Uh-oh.
Perhaps it's time to leave.
But before you can turn to go he glances up and sees you. His face is tanned and determined, and his eyes wide with surprise, but he stands his ground and quickly flicks the book open to somewhere near the end. He strikes a grand pose, and makes a complicated gesture in the air with his free hand - and suddenly, you cannot move. Another gesture, accompanied by a few words of power that seem to reverberate around the draughty building, and -
Boom
It might not be perfect, and it might be anything but clean and tidy, but it works. The spell in that book turned you, alright. It turned you into a fine layer of gray paste, all over the walls...
Eh, at least the world will be saved from zombies by Brave Blow-up Bloke.
9
It's dark back here behind the shops, out of the way of the open town square, and a metal grille in the wall to your right blows hot air in your face. It smells of grease, the fried remains of what might once have been potatoes, and meat so processed it's practically vegetarian.
In front of you, the bum from the dumpster sits rocking back and forth. He's backed up against the wall, and he's staring at you with eyes so wide you can practically see his skull.
"Pu... puh..." he mutters. "Please... duh-duh-don't..."
You stare at him, frowning slightly. His head is bruised in a way that's making your stomach rumble.
He continues to rock and mumble. "Please don't... don't eat my brain..."
10
You turn as quickly as your creaking joints will allow, and stare directly into a face that is pale gray and sagging, with a white circle of little scars around her head. Her hair is greasy and tangled, and she wears a brown sack with holes torn in it for want of any real clothes.
Aargh! She's a zombie!
...Oh, wait.
She stares at you for a moment, then slowly lowers her sawed-off shotgun. "Sorry about that," she apologizes, though she's still eyeing you cautiously. "I thought you were one of them bounty hunters."
By her wide eyes, you startled her, though she doesn't look like one to admit it.
"Hey," she says, as if a thought has just struck her. "You look almost fresh. You newly dead or something?"
11
You squeeze with difficulty through the narrow gap. You're getting more used to being dead now, but the going is still hard.
"Keep up, greenie!" the other zombie calls back in her creaky voice. The sound echoes off the sooty stone as you reach a T-junction.
"Um... hello? Person?" you call. Damn, you should have asked for her name.
No reply is forthcoming, so you look down both alleys. To your left, the way is dark and cobwebby, slimy with weeds and water, and ominously foreboding. Scrawled in red on the wall are the words "certain death". To your right the way is brighter and cleaner; snowdrops sprout from the gaps between bricks, and a jolly little robin is perched on a windowsill, watching you with bright, beady eyes.
Which way do you want to go?
12
You set off down the road to your right, which is warm and pleasant. The mossy bricks are springy underfoot, and against all the odds, birdsong fills the air, along with a scent of flowers.
You start to hum a jaunty tune, your spirits lifting considerably. Up above your head, the canopy of clouds has moved apart to allow the sun to warm your stiff body, and a sweet scent of -
"*NOW!*"
Something long and hard swings out from around a corner and smashes into your forehead, sending white-hot pain tearing through your head. Staggering backward into a wall, you scream in shock and agony and slump sideways, but an arm - a real, warm, pink, human arm - seizes you and yanks you forward.
"Excellent," crows a delighted voice, as the bloody baseball bat is raised once more. "This one and the female will buy us a bed and at least two hot meals, if we play our cards right! Not a bad first swing," it adds to the other human. "But try and knock them out straight away, like I did the other one, so they don't shout and call others."
The other human says something in reply, but they swing the bat down at the same time, sending a flash of searing white across your eyeballs and then -
Nothing.
Damn, looks like she wasn't as good as she thought. Ah well, better luck next time, eh?
13
You stand up, joints creaking, and peer around through the darkness. As your eyes get used to being dead, you begin to make out a smoke-stained brick wall with "the end is extremely nigh" spray-painted upon it. There is another, similar, wall behind you, but this one merely displays various rude words in half-unreadable writing.
You wobble slightly, your legs stiffening with rigor mortis, and reach out to steady yourself - then snatch your hand away again as it comes to rest on the cold, slimy edge of a dump full of flies and rotting food.
A drifter sticks his head out, and slurs: "Find yer own bed, ya bum!" Then his eyes widen as he sees your gray face. "A z- a zo-"
"A zombie?" you offer helpfully.
His only reply is to scream shrilly, vault out of his dumpster, and flee down the alleyway. How rude.
14
With an effort, you resist your brain-hunger, and tear your eyes away from the guy's head. "Okay," you say, "I won't eat you. But get out of here."
But instead of getting up, he begins to giggle, then to laugh in a high-pitched voice. "Get out of here!" he parrots loudly, still giggling uncontrollably. "Get out of here! Zombie! Zombie!"
Dear lord. He's obviously cracked. But as you turn to leave, you hear running footsteps behind you, and a couple of burly men stomp hurriedly over, running to either side of you to block your escape.
Bounty hunters!
"Get it!" one yells, and the other swings a baseball bat at your face with such force that your nose ends up coming out of the back of your head.
And the moral of the story is: always eat people.
15
"What d'you mean, what do I mean?" she stares. "You been hiding under a rock this past month? Darlin', I'm talking about the bounty hunters. The bastards're picking us off, one by one. Ya don't want to be in the way if one o' them starts taking pot-shots, I'll tell ya that for nothin'."
She displays her gun proudly. "Nicked this off of one of them, didn't I? And a bunch of ammo, too."
"Gosh," you say weakly, partly because being dead is taking its toll on your voice strings, but mostly because she just stuck the business end of her shotgun right in your face.
"Anyway," she says, lowering the weapon (to your intense relief), "where're you going? You was definitely going somewhere when I saw ya."
16
You cry out in surprise and begin to run - or, at least, try to run. Remember that rigor mortis? Bane of the undead, that. Your stiff legs creak, and your stick-like arms wave, and then your knees give way and you topple onto a pile of burning rubble. Just before your eyeballs go up in smoke you notice that the person behind you is actually a fellow member of the shuffling undead.
Did I mention that fire kills zombies?
I've never seen a dead guy die so quickly. Go on, get out of here...
17
Are you crazy?
Don't answer that.
You start out at a brisk lurch down the dark and forbidding road, which winds and branches off until you are thoroughly lost. There are stairs to climb, ledges to tumble down, and crumbling, dangerous-looking walls to nervously avoid. You trip several times, and once your eyeball falls out, but you wipe it off and stick it back in, and it seems to work okay.
At no point do you see or hear the other zombie, although you call out to her a couple of times.
Presently you come across a tall wooden stepladder, which protrudes out of a hole in the floor and reaches up to the top of a tall ledge. You try to look down it, but it's too dark to make anything out. Likewise, the ledge is far too tall to see what is at the top. The alley finishes here in a dead-end, and suddenly you wish they'd called it something else. This place gives you the screaming heebie-jeebies.
18
You shuffle over toward the kitchen, holding your chocolate bunny in front of you like a shield.
Suddenly some maniac comes up in front of you and sticks a weed-whacker in your face.
Wait - what? Crap!
19
"Well, in that case, be off with yer," sneers the zombie, poking you arthritically in the chest with her gun. She lurches away, and disappears off between the blackened skeletons of a bank and a bookshop, leaving you standing alone in the deserted town square.
Most of the shops are completely trashed, with only a library, a Woolworth's, and a Thai restaurant looking even remotely stable, let alone enterable. Then again, there's always the alley you came out of. Either way, you might as well go somewhere. Come on, you're a zombie! Live a little!
20
You step into the store, which is cold, empty, and dark - such a contrast from before this whole damn zombie business. You wander up and down the aisles, pondering the essence of mankind and similar philosophical debates, and helping yourself to the Easter chocolate. It's a bit stale, but it still tastes good - especially the dark chocolate, that keeps really well. Yum.
Biting the ear from a marbled bunny rabbit, you hear a revving sound, like an engine, somewhere in the kitchen supplies aisle.
21
You shrug. To hell with him: he smells even worse than you do. Turning on your heel, you begin to lurch off toward the wider end of the alley.
It's harder than it looks in the movies: rigor mortis makes it feel like all your limbs are tied into a straightjacket, and although being dead puts quite a damper on your nerves, the wounds in your head are still aching annoyingly.
Finally, you make it out into North Street. Behind you is a McDonald's, empty and eerie with its windows smashed and its jolly cardboard clown leaning through the broken glass, missing an arm. The other shops have fared little better: in typical post-Apocalyptic fashion, the general populace has been on a looting-spree. Some piles of bricks are still on fire, against all the laws of physics.
The whole scene is deserted.
Suddenly, there is a click behind you, unnervingly loud in the silence.