Once a big world changing event like this comes to pass, you'd expect people like us to be the first ones to go. The first ones to drop. But we didn't. Should I say that with a Hurray? Should I be happy? Unless I am talking to a 30th century ultra intelligent cockroach. Are you?
If you have thought that the wise and cool minded cop Rick or the oh so ruggedly handsome crossbow yielding hunk named Daryl to be the ones still standing, I am happy to break it to you that you are gleefully wrong. So, so wrong. Infact I would go as far as to say that they were the first ones to grace us with their half eaten limbs. Dangling, almost falling off, torn up faces. Tattered and stinking clothes.
Why? You ask. That's simple. Because when shit is going down you don't be wise. You don't hatch plans. You don't be brave. You don't save people. You just get your shit together. Or try to do so. And run. Run like hell. Because the shit that's going down ain't gonna wait for your wily ass to come up with an ingenious plan to save the world. It's gonna rain down on you. Gobble you up. And spit you up like a half cooked, one year old cold turkey.
With that we come to the Enlightenment Tree. What does it say? Nothing much. That's right. Trees don't talk. They sit their. Be dumb like. Breathe in. Breathe out. And look at them. They ain't dead. So are we. That's how we survived. Playing cold turkey. Err... Not the one I mentioned earlier though.
So, here we are. We are alive. We are happy. There are dead walking the streets. Then why the fuck am i wasting your time.
Hmm. Maybe because it gets a tad too boring when all you do through the entire day is looking out the window and be greeted by the occasional herd of zo.. Wait. Are we gonna use the z word? Am I going to face copyright issues for this. Well, you know the dead walking the earth is enough of a trouble, I don't want to deal with some legal issues, just because I was getting bored.
Anyways. So it's not always this boring. There are some exciting days.
No.... Not fighting the eye patched governor. If you haven't figured it out yet. You should have payed more attention. This is India. We don't have the budget for Rocket Launchers and Machine Guns hidden in someone's basement just because he thought that zom...youknowwhatfuckcopyrights.... Zombie Apocalypse might actually turn out to be an issue. And also the fact that we don't have a basement. We never have a basement. It's like stripping us off of our birth right from household hauntings. They always start at the basement. They almost always.
The only excitement we get when we watch some new people. Healthy people trying to run from a horde. Or just looking for something. Maybe shouting for help. (Note: Shouting for help in a zombie apocalypse is a clichéd way to die. But then again, after so many years of art and literature, every form of death is.) And the almost deads (see how I avoid the z word, I am a pro) surrounding them. And then we trying our best to save them. Wait. What the f...? No. We watched. We watched them torn into pieces. Crying endlessly for help.
Ok. Go ahead. Call us sick. To that I'd say, "No harm done." We all are already sick. We are immortal. Not the legendary kind. Not like Hawk man or Hawk girl either. Our rebirth is like getting coked up mouthful and waking up with an incredible case of human rabies. Yeah we are all sick. Not with the sexy sounding T-virus. I guess the doctors didn't come up with a name. I know they didn't come up with a cure. They were too late. They were........ too dead. Or they listened to Mark Watney's claim and left for Mars. Well hey, thanks to Elon, space travel is cheap now. Only in the few million dollar mark. (Quick tip: When common people like us read a news about an incredible thing getting cheap, he thinks it's a waste of space, better filled by the boy next gulley who committed suicide by slitting his wrist with a ball point pen. A frigging ball point pen. Yes, very juicy stuff. Juicy. Indeed. )
The reason I think that they didn't end up to be the bunch of happy sausage sellers from a space opera of the future and rather an unfortunate bunch in a George Romero flick is because of the basic construction of a highly secure, highly maintained facility. They just beg to fail. A mistake by the fat assed, all day burger munching, googly eyed, idiot who fails to check whether the electric fence is working or not after the daily power reset. Then becomes the first nice meal for the deadies. Then the real carnage begins. Oh. Such beauty. Much munching and crunching. They don't need Prisma to make an art. They do them inherently. And that too in galore. A whole museum worth of work done in a matter of hours.
As they move from room to room. Filled with the brightest minds. And the tastiest of brains. It's a buffet they say. No. They gnarl. Weren't these minds about to break the fourth dimension and venture into subjects unknown. Instead they end up breaking their fingers. Hmm. Fingers lickin good. Legs lickin good. Intestines lickin good. Testes lickin good. Now I can go on like this. Or you can imagine the loud screams and munching slowly and gently fading into the dark while the camera zooms out, rotates 180 degrees and it too runs like hell.
So, a long long time ago and in a galaxy far far away from the Andromeda galaxy in this God forsaken planet called Earth a person simply named "me" (and conveniently so) was talking about us being sick. Downright cruel. But we weren't like the Patels across the street. They took 8 people in. That's 8 plus 3 meat loafs for the hungry deads. Mr. Patel, Mrs. Patel and Jr. Patel, the plus 3s. There is ofcourse strength in numbers. There is also an increasing amount of idiocy too. Call it cloudy with a chance of love-bites. Call them The Three Musketeers and their eight wheels of doom.
So, I proved my point. We weren't going anywhere. We literally weren't going anywhere. We were there. Day in day out. Night after night. Looking through the thing that was actually a window but we used it like a TV set. Everything outside was a slow running, mostly downright boring, TV show. You drag a plot for too long, it looses it's charm. Such is the world through that window. The Apocalypse. The finale. It wasn't the blockbuster we hoped it to be. More like the detached twitching tail of a barely escaped lizard.
The Patels were generous people. We brought two kids in too. A boy and a girl. About the ripe age of eleven. Now they are all grown. All muscular. All strong. Perfect scavengers. I mean, "come on" . I did the math and I was right (if I am not then that would have been a complete and utter of my degree) we would loose food eventually and we have to scavenge for food and other stuffs. And here they are perfect scavenging machines. They don't mind either. They owe us. Did you really think us to be the Charity type? And we all know there ain't no charity that didn't come with a small asterisk hidden somewhere like the one in the ten second quiz "FIND THE HIDDEN BAMBOO-IN-YOUR-ASS PICTURE" you would randomly find while scrolling through your Facebook feed. No. Not single one of them. Agenda was the cause. Charity was the affect. Not even when the world was seemingly in one piece. We were already broken. Us, we knew it. But those wise and brave people, they had hope, blinding hope. They used to be happy. In this new world they are as usual happy. Happy meals.
Now. Take rest for a minute. Or a couple if you have to escape from a zombie attack.
Blah. Blah. Blah. Ya. That's probably what you are thinking of me. Throwing out shits like a pig infected with dysentery. But I don't know what it looks to be a pig infected with dysentery. Nothing elegant I assume.
But tell me don't you feel the mess we are in. This world slowly growing inside your chest. Waiting to burst out like a Xenomorph (that alien that scared the shit out of every 90's kid) . But these days things are so much more real. They don't even know what it feels like to be scared shitless sitting in that dark room with a crowd of unknown people and watching the scenes roll with sound effects that are enough to stop your heart beat. These they don't feel that fake excitement. Thay safe excitement. Everything is real. Everything is way too real. Kids these days. They know how their parents taste. Whether their big brother was more fulfilling that their younger sister?
Happy endings. The one we need but the one we don't deserve. Now, I don't know who you are or what you are expecting from this story. But let me tell you, this is very much the story I need, but certainly not the one I deserve. I need to tell you this story because it's our age old itching to leave behind something. Anything. Something that will remind others of us and the lives we led. Be it a brave one like Superman, Batman, Spiderman. (If you are a hot lady from Venus, I'm going to take this chance to alter history, hope she doesn't know how to read the subtext) or be it a selfish, worthless one like mine.
Thus, writing a story is a very good way of doing so. Unless someone brought back Hitler, somehow, and he has taken to his old habits again, yes, that of burning books, as if people didn't burn bright enough. Then sadly, no one's reading this. And i wasted my ink for the demons. Well, that's where I'm going. Maybe the same fate awaits my belongings. Hope the lodging is better now, since they recently encroached a vast new territory. Hell probably is a lot more spacious now.
(Note: If this story ends abruptly or maybe in a well ordered fashion with likely no huge reveals except that my best friend is currently suffering from a seizure after eating I-don't-know-what and we soon might have to return him to the world of the undead, I think it's safe to presume that none of that matters. Either way we end up dead.)
This is the Swan Song. The final chapter. What happened to our planet? What happened to us? (Seriously, who cares. Let's look at the bigger picture.) You know what happened to our planet. If you are reading this. You may have read a lot more of such bullshits. Maybe written more elegantly. Ya. It's like when you tell your kid that God gave him to you. And not that you fucked the hell out of your wife / husband inside the taxi while sweating profusely like a pig and squealing like a dog with pure ecstasy. Ya. That looks elegant. Doesn't it?
You. You know how it ends. Good. Bad. Most probably bad. Or worse. Even more likely. Either way, you know. You know that we never choose our end. It's our end that chooses us. But, since I don't know who you are, your reality is just but a choice to me. It's a choice, what I want to believe. And i hope you believe that I believed your choice to be wise. You hope that I believed you to be wise. You can only hope so much from such a hopeless species. And with that, I rest my case.
