The Living Undead

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    It was the End of Days.

    Civilisation had collapsed. Law and order were a distant memory. Chaos ruled the streets.

    It was the time so many had so long waited so eagerly for.

    The Zombocalypse had come at last.

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    Fanboy Number One leaned back in his chair and stared, gloating, up at the ceiling. In his imagination, through it, his gaze reached the hordes of Dead Fucks shambling along the streets. Sensually, like a lover, he stroked the sleek black M 16 rifle in his hands. The magazine was full of metal jacketed rounds, all ready to blast holes through the heads of any of Those Things that Fanboy Number One aimed at.

    Behind Fanboy Number One, leaned against the basement wall, piled on the table and chairs, and thrown on the bed, was the rest of his beloved arsenal; an M 1, an M 2, one M 3, an M 4, two M 6s, an M 7, one M 8, part of an M 10 (the stock was missing), an M 11, an M 14, an M 15, another M 16, an M 17, no less than three M 19s, an M 20, a couple of M 57s, one M 85, and an M 99. There was also an Armalite, a Legaheavy, a Winchester, a Losebacker, a Colt Special, a Horse General, a Desert Eagle, a Forest Pigeon, a Glock, a Gkey, a pump shotgun, and an aqueduct shotgun. Of course there was ammunition for all of them: piles of shotgun shells in 12 gauge, 21 gauge, 14 gauge and 23 gauge; bullets in 0.22, 0.25, 0.52, 0.32, 0.23, 0.44, 0.45, 0.53, 5.56mm, 6.55mm, 7.62 mm, 6.27 mm, 9 mm, 12.7mm, and 7.12 mm sizes, all thrown together in confusion.  Also there were cans of gun oil, slings, leather holsters, and posters on the wall of Arnold Schwarzenegger using all of those weapons, sometimes all of them at once. There was also a katana, a compound bow, another compound bow, yet another compound bow, an arrow, and, last but not the least, a Stinger surface to air missile loaded in a disposable portable launcher. Fanboy Number One intended to use this on any interfering helicopter that might threaten him with rescue.

    Fanboy Number One did not want rescue. Fanboy Number One was very happy right where he was.

    How long had Fanboy Number One waited for this day? How many years had he spent watching zombie movies, worshipping the Sainted George Romero, knowing him for the Holy Prophet that he was, instead of merely the maker of trash movies that everyone else took him for? How many hundreds of hours had he crouched over his keyboard, gnawing at sandwiches while reading zombie fiction on sites such as the Home Page Of The Dead and posting messages on zombie survival fora? He’d known, known, damn it, that this day would come! How he had planned for this, how he’d pined, hating the stupid fools who said he was an immature basement dwelling troglodyte with neither social skills nor any aptitude to make a living! How many times he had promised himself that when the day came, he would show them.

    The day, the glorious day, had finally arrived, and Fanboy Number One was ready.

    No, he did not want rescue, not at all.

    Turning back to his computer, Fanboy Number One brushed a few of the larger crumbs off the keyboard and turned on the machine. He grimaced slightly when he saw that the internet was still up. He had mixed feelings about this. If the net was up, he could gloat over all the losers who had mocked him and, obviously, had not prepared for this day. He, who had absorbed the teachings of Saint Romero, was chosen and would survive. They, who had mocked, would all die, and they deserved to. But not before they had to endure his gloating.

        Still, there was something he knew: absolutely everyone but he couldn’t be allowed to die. It was compulsory that at least a few needed to survive. Yes, there had to be a fairly stupid moron who was to act as a representative of all the imbeciles who had not Heard Romero’s Call, and who had better be abjectly grateful to Fanboy Number One for saving his pathetic life. There had to be a Fanboy Number Seventy or thereabouts – nowhere even close to Fanboy Number One, no threat to him at all, but useful to look out for any shambling Pus Buckets who managed to evade Fanboy Number One’s eagle eyes and eternal vigilance. And, of course, there had to be a Beautiful Woman. This was the most important of all. She would be beautiful, as beautiful as all those women on the internet who posed without any clothes on, and, unlike all the women who in real life avoided Fanboy Number One as though he’d got Coronavirus, she would be head over heels in love with him.

    Of course she would be head over heels in love with him. Fanboy Number One even knew exactly how it would happen. He would be out in the street; the broad avenues which he normally shunned, because of the crowds of people who were, for all their manifest inferiority, taller, cleaner, better looking, better dressed, and ignored him totally. Now, though, he would be the king of all he surveyed, with one of his M 16s in his arms, his sceptre of reign as well as his executioner’s sword. He’d also have his Winchester, or maybe his Losebacker, slung over his shoulder, and his Desert Special at his hip. The katana would be slung from his other hip, his pockets loaded with ammunition. He would fear nobody, not a Rotting Gut Bucket zombie nor any living human, because he would be the king.

    And he would hear them, the zombie hordes, slobbering and moaning as they searched for food. He would follow the groans and moans, because it would be fun to destroy them, one-line quips already forming in his head and trembling on his lips, eager to be uttered. Things like, “You thought you were dead, now you’re deader than dead.” Or, “Zombies? We don’t need no stinkin’ zombies. And you stink.” Or something else, he knew he would think of something absolutely fitting when the moment came. Anyway, he would find them, crowded around the building where she was trapped, slapping and clawing at the doors. And he would see her, peering down from an upper window, her terror not doing anything to mask her fantastic beauty, her immaculately made-up face framed by her perfectly coiffed hair. Maybe she would be naked...no, Fanboy Number One amended regretfully, that wasn’t likely when she was running from zombies. She’d probably be in torn jeans, a shabby jacket, and scuffed boots. No, she’d get naked later, when he’d got her to safety. He could wait that long.

    “Hold on,” he would shout up at her, where she waited at the window, her eyes suddenly filled with wild hope. “Hold on, I’ll save you.” And he would raise his M 16 and squeeze off shots, one by one, every one through a Dead Fuck’s decomposing braincase, the Pus Buckets falling like ninepins before his bullets. At first the survivors would turn, moaning and gibbering with hunger and hatred, but before his bullets they would learn fear. Even their rotted, flyblown ambulating carcasses would know fear of him, and they would slink off at last, just as he shot his way to the door, and they would leave him alone.

    “Oh god,” she would say, and fling herself sobbing into his arms, when he’d shot the lock off the door and made his way inside. “Oh god, I thought I was done for this time.” And she’d kiss his mouth. Fanboy Number One, who’d never kissed or been kissed by anything or anyone, licked his lips, anticipating how it would feel.

    “We’ve got to get away,” he’d say. “I got rid of Those Things, but they’ll be back.” And they would hear the moaning and shuffling as the zombie hordes, swollen with reinforcements, returned. “Here,” he’d say, handing her the katana, because women with swords were sexy. “Here, take this.” And she would take the sword and flourish it, the sun glinting along the edge, and her face would fill with grim determination.

    “Now let them come,” she would say, through gritted – yet impeccably clean, without a trace of plaque or caries – teeth. “Let them come, and we’ll show them.” And as the zombies came shuffling forward, she would swing the sword, and rotting heads would go tumbling off undead shoulders just as fast as Fanboy Number One’s bullets would smash other rotting heads like overripe pumpkins. Oh, those zombies would pay for their presumption. How they would pay!

    Then when they got back to his basement, she would push him down on the bed, take off all her clothes, take off all his clothes, put on a pair of stiletto heels, and then make love to him as expertly as all the women on the porn videos Fanboy Number One spent hours every day watching, every minute that he wasn’t on the zombie sites, that is. Afterwards, she would relax in his arms and tell him her sad story.

    “When those Dead Things rose,” she would say, “I found shelter with a group of Survivors, as they called themselves. They had made an armed camp in a mall, under a man called the Demon Kid. And he soon made all of us prisoners.” She would tell him all about the tortures the Demon Kid would have inflicted on her, but he didn’t bother to imagine that part. It didn’t matter. “At last I managed to escape, but I’d hardly got away when I was found and chased by those Dead Fucks. I ran for shelter into the building where you saved me Just In Time. And I’m afraid that the Demon Kid will be looking for me, and find me again.”

    “Not unless I find him first,” Fanboy Number One would grind out, reaching for a shotgun or two and springing to his feet. “Get the sword and come on.”

    “You’re so heroic,” the Beautiful Woman would say. “Nothing scares you at all.” And she’d make love to him all over again.

    Afterwards, they would go to the mall, which the Demon Kid would have turned into a fortress with barbed wire festooned with the heads of zombies. But the Beautiful Woman would know a secret back way in, by which she had escaped, and they would march right into the Demon Kid’s den. Fanboy Number One would look at the cowering Demon Kid, and would lift his lip in a sneer. “Consider yourself the Demonetised Kid,” he would say, and blow the Demon Kid’s head off with one shotgun blast.

    Then all the Demon Kid’s group would swear loyalty to Fanboy Number One, but he’d dismiss them all, except for Fanboy Number Seventy, who would be useful, and Fairly Stupid Moron, so he could be snivellingly grateful every day to Fanboy Number One. And if either of them even looked at Beautiful Woman, he’d shoot their heads off, too.

    Thinking about how this would all be, Fanboy Number One grinned savagely to himself and thumped away on his keyboard. “I’ll go out to bag me some Zombie Dead Pus Buckets,” he typed out. “And then I’ll come back and teach all you losers just how it should be done!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1!!!!!!!”

    Then, picking up his M 16, he slung his Losebacker over one shoulder and slapped on his Forest Pigeon on one hip. He strapped the katana on his other hip, took one step, tripped over it, and fell flat on his face. His M 16 went off and a bullet crashed through his computer.

    “To hell with those losers anyway,” he said, wiping the blood from his nose. “They’ll be dead soon, and then I’ll shoot them all in the face.”

    Then he stomped out of his basement and up into the street, where a gang of cannibals immediately set on him, knocked him over the head with a bludgeon, barbecued and ate him over a campfire, and licked their fingers clean afterwards with delight.

    There never were any zombies, of course.

Copyright B Purkayastha 2020