See, it wasn’t just the zombies that we had to watch out for. If it was, and if the president and Homeland Security and the Centers for Disease Control and the rest of our government had acted quickly enough, then maybe none of this would have happened. But they didn’t. Just like Pearl Harbor and 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina and all the other national disasters. When faced with an unimaginable crisis, the government failed to respond in an effective and timely manner. Maybe they couldn’t. I mean, there’s probably no FEMA playbook for what to do when dead folks start running around eating people. It’s not the sort of thing the government plans for. It’s an unimaginable scenario.
But it wasn’t imagination. It was real.
In the weeks that followed there were dangers other than just the zombies. Looters and gangs of armed thugs roamed the streets. Cops and National Guardsmen who’d gone off the deep end shot the dead and living indiscriminately. America returned to the glory days of the Old West. Things like innocence and guilt didn’t matter. The only law that mattered was the law of the gun. They evacuated Washington, D.C., and sent the president, his cabinet, and all the king’s horses and men who worked in the House and the Senate off to secure underground bunkers in Virginia and Maryland and Pennsylvania. They were supposed to be able to run the country from there. They didn’t. Things fell apart.
Our cities and towns resembled Somalia or Beirut. Well, to be honest, my neighborhood had been like that even before Hamelin’s Revenge. Only difference was now the rest of the country got a taste of what it was like to live in the ghetto. Instead of drug gangs and tweaked-out freaks on crystal meth or crack, we now had vigilantes and zombies. Not much of a change, and in either case, the cops still didn’t show up when you called them.
I remember a press conference with the secretary of state. He was sweating like a pig. Looked nervous. He assured the reporters that President Tyler, the vice president, and cabinet members were all fine—and that the crisis was passing. Things would soon be under control, and society would return to normal. Until then, martial law would remain in effect as a cautionary measure.
Except that nobody was calling the shots. The person in charge was the guy with the most firepower, and that changed from moment to moment.
People didn’t aspire to cure the disease or stop it from spreading. They only aspired to not get eaten by a zombie. They’d always worried about their careers and homes and favorite television shows and what their most- loved Hollywood starlet had done. Now the only thing they worried about was staying alive. And the worst part was that if you’d asked people, they probably couldn’t tell you why they bothered resisting. Did it matter? What was the point? The zombies outnumbered the living. Why not surrender, or eat a bullet? Like I said, survival instinct is a motherfucker. You do what you have to, even if you don’t understand why.
Some people had higher aspirations, of course. When there’s blood on the streets, there’s money to be made. That’s an eternal law in the ghetto, and the rest of the world learned it soon enough. Stocks, bonds, shit like that —worthless. Cold hard cash ruled the day, and price gouging was common. Twenty bucks for a gallon of gas or a bottle of water. And when the cash became as worthless as the paper it was printed on, the barter system took over. Your wife—your daughter—in exchange for what you needed to survive.
The madness continued. Burning the dead became the law, but there weren’t enough fire pits or crematories to go around. Last bit of the news I saw, in Pennsylvania, a National Guard officer had reportedly ordered the death of civilians by firing squad. They were accused of looting. In Miami, zombies overran the airport. A popular television preacher committed suicide, believing that the Rapture had occurred and he’d missed it. In China, a nuclear reactor went into meltdown. Chicago and Phoenix were on fire. The military finally retreated from New York City after losing control and admitting defeat.
More people died every day. Then they came back. And every day there were less of us. It was a cruel, cruel summer.
I stayed inside. Didn’t have any family. My mama died years ago. Breast cancer. Our health insurance sucked. There wasn’t much they could do, in any case. Found a lump during a routine exam. Three months later, she was gone. I never knew my old man. Heard he was useless. That’s all I knew of him. “
The big thing I had to deal with was the passage of time. Trapped inside the house all day and all night with no television or Xbox or shit like that. I had to find things to occupy my mind, because otherwise I’d get very depressed and start thinking about walking outside, finding the nearest zombie, and letting him have a bite. The loneliness was the worst part, and that’s why I was glad when I found out Alan was alive and he joined me (even if he was hopelessly straight). Alan was my neighbor. Nice enough guy. He’d worked at the plant too, and got laid off the same time as me. Alan took a gig with a temp agency. Did odd jobs like flagging traffic and loading trucks. Some days they had work for him. Some days they didn’t. He barely scraped by. But he’d never once let his spirits get down. He was a funny, jovial person. After he’d moved in (because his house wasn’t as secure) my loneliness vanished.
But eventually, with his added presence, supplies went quicker than I’d imagined. With the power out, the food in the fridge had spoiled and the kitchen smelled like the zombies. I still had plenty of beer, canned goods, and packaged foods. Had plenty of water, too. We pissed in empty beer bottles so the toilet water would remain untainted. I figured we could drink from the commode if necessary.
When we ran out of food, we had to venture out. That was when I participated in looting the Safeway. I know what you’re thinking. Black man, late-twenties… of course he looted the grocery store. Well fuck you. It wasn’t like that. I grew up hard. Lived in an old row house in the middle of Druid Hill Park. Place was a fucking dump. We had rags stuffed in the cracks in the walls and plastic over the windows in the wintertime to keep out the cold. My childhood pets were all cockroaches. The neighborhood was filthy-garbage on the sidewalks and dead grass and broken glass covering the vacant lots. I saw my friends get gunned down in the streets. Saw their dried blood on the sidewalks. Saw the cops and the preachers shrug in resigned consignation. They didn’t care. Neither did anybody else. Only time people gave a fuck was during an election year—or if somebody white and wealthy got killed. I spent my childhood in shit. I stepped on crack vials every time I went outside to play. Drugs were all around me. So was crime. It was a way of life. But I didn’t buy into that shit. I lived my life differently. Stayed in school. Worked a job. Never did drugs. Never boozed. Never robbed anybody. Like I said, until the stick-up at the dealership, I’d never held a gun in my life. And I ain’t proud of that incident. But shove your stereotypes up your ass. I’m educated. No college, but I graduated high school. Not that GED shit, either. I actually went to class and got my diploma the old-fashioned way. I read a lot and watched Discovery Channel. I didn’t talk like a thug. Didn’t feel the need to emulate a rapper. Ground my teeth every time some well-meaning white acquaintance deferred to me at a party when the conversation turned to basketball or slave reparations or Colin Powell’s run for president or hip-hop. I didn’t flash the bling. I respected women. Didn’t view them as ho’s. Didn’t hang out in front of the liquor store. Thought P Diddy was a douche bag. Vote or die? Fuck you, you stupid, conceited, fronting motherfucker. I felt the same way about Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, too. They were supposed to identify with what I’d been through? Please. None of them spoke for me. I didn’t feel the need to respect them just because we shared the same skin color. Didn’t drape myself in gold jewelry. Didn’t let my pants sag around my fucking ankles. I refused to let a media-inspired culture influence how I dressed, talked, walked, thought, or behaved.
Don’t talk to me about equal rights. I got it from both sides. The quiet, almost apologetic racism from white America, and the more flagrant disapproval from my own race, simply because I refused to live up to what they’d been conditioned to think an African-American should be. My peers thought there was something wrong with me simply because I refused to act like a thug.
And even on good days, when I’d faced down each and every one of the stereotypes that comes with being a black man—even then I’d be met with a whole bunch more prejudice because of my sexual orientation.
Think that it’s hard being black? Try being a gay black male sometime.
Hamelin’s Revenge not withstanding…
The biggest stereotype of all was my steady employment. People either expected me to deal drugs, live off welfare, or be a fucking limp-wrist hairdresser. I don’t know why. There’s nothing about me that’s either gangsta or feminine. Maybe they’d watched too much
