A body with his skull broken in lays on the floor. Three high school juniors are staring at it. There is a wooden baseball bat smeared with blood and brain next to the body.
“Holy shit,” said Chris, “It really is a zombie.”
“I told you,” said Gary, “I used my dad’s gun on one out at the farm, it didn’t even flinch when I put one in its heart.”
“I knew all those people the cops have been gunning down weren’t meth addicts,” said Brian, “those pigs can barely hit a moving target, much less a tweaked out crack head, plus all those headshots are totally not police procedure. They know what’s going on.”
The implication of their discovery hit all three of them at once. All of their movie, music and TV choices had lead to this. They knew how to deal how to identify zombies, they knew how to dispose of zombies, and now it seemed that fate, or chance, or God or Cthulu had put them in the right place at the right time to put down a zombie uprising while it was more uprising than apocalyptic event.
The three friends quickly gathered blunt instruments, and started planning their action.
“The facts are these”, said Chris, “we know that most of the reported ‘crack head’ killings have been near the new ethanol plant, we should start there. Who else would believe us?”
“What about Alan,” said Gary, “he’s always writing those weird ass stories, some of them have zombies in them, he might believe us.”
The three friends piled into Gary’s 1990 Toyota Corolla to go talk to Alan.
Alan wasn’t exactly friends with Chris, Gary and Brian, but there was a sort of mutual respect between them. While they didn’t really like the same movies and music, they at least liked the same general genres. While Chris, Gary and Brian were busy reading Stephen King, Alan was reading Vikram and the Vampire and other obscure, historical works of horror. He was also known for writing highly literary horror stories that were almost more symbolic than narrative. Chris Gary and Brian didn’t understand Alan, but they did respect him.
On their way to his house they spotted him walking in the dark.
“Hey,” said Chris, “you want to go kill some zombies?”
Without blinking, without asking so much as a single question Alan said yes, and got in the car.
As they began driving towards the ethanol plant they noticed that their high school’s parking lot was filled with cars.
“It’s the homecoming dance”, said Alan, “that’s probably where you’ll find the most zombies gathered.”
Chris, Gary and Brian assumed that Alan had put together the same pieces of the puzzle that they had.
“Makes sense”, said Gary, “they’ll be drawn there by lights and sound.”
“Nice,” said Alan, and though Gary glanced at him quizzically he didn’t say anything else.
Chris nosed Gary’s Corolla into a parking spot. The nearly 20 year old vehicle looked out of place next to most of the newer cars there. Brian handed Alan a spare baseball bat they had brought. Alan looked a little uneasy, but accepted the gift.
As the four would-be zombie slayers approached their high school they could hear screams coming from inside.
“What the hell is that?” asked Alan.
“We’re too late, it’s already begun,” Chris intoned.
Alan shot Chris a surprised look and raised his hands in a ‘what are you talking about’ motion. The other three all ignored him and continued to purposefully walk towards the high school. Alan trailed behind, looking perplexed.
Chris opened the door to the gym, instead of the usual dancing, punch drinking, feel copping that would go on at one of these events there was instead pandemonium. The dim lighting made everything feel much more chaotic but one thing was clear, students were being eaten by zombies, even if some of those zombies happened to have been students just minutes before. Dark shapes ran back and forth, other dark shapes shambled after them. Here and there three or four of the shambling shapes would catch a running and shape and the screaming would ratchet up even higher for a few seconds.
Chris hit the lights and he, Brian and Gary went to work. Where ever they saw a zombie they would put him, or her down with a home run shot across the temple. They worked methodically making sure no zombies ever got behind them or close enough to bite them.
Gary looked back and saw Alan just staring at the scene. He seemed to be in total shock, as if he wasn’t prepared for this at all. He held his bat in his right hand with the barrel resting on the ground behind him. It wasn’t clear if he even realized he held a bat at all. Gary took one last swing at a zombie that was chewing its way through a cheerleader’s neck, Gary thought her name was Mindy, or Cindy or… whatever. The zombie’s skull caved in spraying blood and brain over her white dress, although it was probably three minutes too late for Mindy, or Cindy or whatever.
Then he turned and walked back to Alan.
“What are you doing,” he screamed at Alan, “Aren’t you going to help? This is what we came here for.”
“I thought you were speaking metaphorically,” said Alan, “I thought we were going to be rude or something to the homecoming crowd”.
“Why would we call them zombies?”
“What do you think all my stories are about? These people are brain dead, they can’t see beyond this stupid tiny town, and this stupid tiny school, all they do is mindlessly wander around in packs consuming everything that isn’t like them. Why wouldn’t you call them zombies?”
Alan then dropped the bat he had been holding, turned around and walked out of the school, across the parking lot and started towards his home.