Necromania

I checked the paper this morning. It was covering the same ongoing story it covered yesterday, and the day before. Most people would write off disappearances among the homeless as nothing concerning them, but I knew the true significance of the story. One night, one hobo went missing, then two the next night, but it became considered newsworthy when the number missing was up to five.

Though the news only started commenting on the disappearances this week, it’s probably already too late to start preparing for what will follow. Good thing I’ve been preparing for a while now.

I used to plan for the zombie apocalypse in grade school and middle school. It never used to be serious back then. These “plans” were always power fantasies of how I would mow down hoards of zombies with all my friends. They always began and ended in combat, and never touched upon food, shelter, sanitation, medicine, or any of the other tedious parts of the apocalypse that television and video games love to ignore.

This obsession with preparing for a fictional disaster soon became less interesting when I took my first high school science class. It was there that I not only found what would eventually become my life’s calling, but also met my girlfriend. I tried to play it cool and act like she wasn’t too important to me, but I couldn’t keep the disaffected teenager charade up for long, and she soon learned that she meant everything to me. With her, everything was good in my life, and I could focus easily on any task at hand.

I got excellent grades that got into a prestigious college, and the only real problem in my life was that my girlfriend had to stay while I went to another state. It was a minor inconvenience, as we both knew that our destiny was to be married when I got my degree.

Maintaining my long distance relationship was a part of my routine, as I teleconferenced with her religiously. I didn’t notice anything wrong with the way she spoke at the time, although in hindsight, something did seem a bit off about the conversations we had. I was able to keep the conversation lively, though, as I always had something interesting going on in my life, always going to different social events with my circle of friends, and taking on personal projects in time between classes, since the university let students have access to the lab equipment outside of assignments.

Every part of my life was looking up, and I should have known that it all seemed too good to be true. On one weekend that started like any other, my girlfriend suddenly had something she wanted to tell me. She couldn’t wait for me to finish college, and started seeing someone else, and when she said “seeing”, I could tell she meant fucking.

I spent the rest of the weekend looking into this piece of shit my ex chose over me. With every fact I looked up about him, I had an internal struggle, knowing that none of the news would be good, but having to know just how wretched this man was. I was only taken away from my internet stalking by my friends, calling to see why I hadn’t shown up to our usual weekend activities.

When they asked if everything was alright, I just told them that I needed to be left alone. I couldn’t keep the miserable tone out of my voice, so naturally, my friends immediately started prying into my situation despite my request. Some friends they turned out to be.

Despite my friends’ attempts to get me back into their social activities, I spent the rest of the day blowing off steam by playing video games. In the back of my mind, while I blew the heads off zombies, I fantasized about what would happen if a real zombie outbreak took place. She would desperately come running to me for protection, and I would just lock her out. She wasn’t faithful to me, so why should I be faithful to her? If she came along with her new boyfriend, and seriously expected me to help them both, I just might shoot them myself. Besides, if they’re left outside for the zombies, I’ll just have to shoot them anyway, so why not have some fun with it?

The next day, I was ready to leave the house and face the world. My friends dragged me to the local bar, and tried to make me forget about my girlfriend. How could they be so ignorant, insensitive, or both? My girlfriend meant the world to me, and they thought I would just “get over” the fact that she soled out the years of commitment before, and the future we had planned together. I went back into those dark fantasies about the zombie apocalypse. I imagined how easy it would be to paint the walls with the brains of these “friends”, once they become zombies. “Assuming, of course, that I don’t mistake them for zombies and blow their brains out early,” I thought, while watching one of them drunkenly stumble around and mutter incoherently.

Once I got home from that night of “fun”, I realized that I had forgotten to study for my upcoming exams. I only realized it when I was too late, and I already couldn’t focus due to the events that occurred in the last few days.

As Murphy’s Law would dictate, this caused my grades to take an instant nose dive all across the board. The worst part was the fact that I was attending college on academic scholarships, so I had no chance for inflating my GPA with easy classes, taking summer term, graduating late, or any of the other outs that my classmates from richer families could fall back on.

After getting kicked out of college, I moved back into my parents’ house. They let me live in their basement, in a few small rooms they promised to never entered after clearing them out for me. I soon realized how easy it would be to prepare this house for a zombie outbreak.

Zombie proofing supplies cost most of the meager sum of money I had coming out of college, but it would be worth it soon enough. I could easily secure all the windows as soon as the panic hits. Once the panic in the streets stopped, I would clear out any zombies standing around the house at the time, and then dig a moat around the outside of the fence. I even plan to put that razor wire I bought from the black market on top of the fence, just for good measure. The best part about the moat would be the way it keeps both zombies and other survivors out with little maintenance. Zombies would get trapped inside, and become a natural deterrent to any other survivors who wanted to raid my house. They would even moan at the sight of incoming humans, like guard dogs, but without all the responsibility of pet ownership.

On this now fortified plot of land, I would use the gardening supplies I bought to convert the backyard into a farm, reducing the need to go out and loot. The best part of this zombie proof house, however, would be having the whole thing to myself.

When my parents see the news that there is a zombie outbreak, they will immediately go on a shopping spree like all the other people who didn’t prepare. They would desperately stock up on guns and emergency rations, completely ignorant of the wealth of supplies sitting around me as I write this.

I would love to see the looks on their faces when they come home from the shopping trip, only to find their own house fortified, and learn that they’re locked out. If they ask me to let them in, I’m going to enjoy explaining why I won’t. They failed to support my career, so why should I support them in their time of need?

You may be wondering at this point, what separates me from any other survivalist preparing for the undead apocalypse? The answer’s deceptively simple; I have a zombie apocalypse in which to survive.

When my scholarships were denied, I had a limited amount of time left to live on campus. I spent that time working feverishly in the genetics lab. Knowing that I had no chance to put my life back on track, I created one final personal project. I snuck some samples of the rabies virus into the lab, and made a few modifications. I was breaking numerous campus rules, but what were they going to do if I got caught, expel me?

The virus worked exactly as I always dreamed it would since I was in middle school. Currently, I can hear the homeless people who went missing clawing at the walls of their cage. Tonight, I will drive them into the city in my parents’ car, drop them off in a random alley, and drive home like nothing happened. Those hobos will be joined by whoever is unlucky enough to be around when I let them loose. This virus, my virus, will have the city streets overrun with the infected before the sun sets tomorrow if my projections are correct.

In the coming post-apocalyptic society, nobody will question the ethics of me blowing the faces off that filthy whore and her new boy toy, or decapitating those “friends” that turned on me. Everyone will think I’m just another victim of the disaster like any other survivor, when the world looks as ugly to everyone else as it does do to me.