Welcome to the Real World

I can't count the number of times I've rolled my eyes at society's obsession with zombies. If it were a wet rag, it had been wrung dry so long ago, and yet people kept trying to wring another drop. I'd have loved to see undead fiction lain to rest for good.

But here we are. It's no longer a fiction. It's real.

It makes me glad I didn't spend my time in civilization sitting around in front of a TV, getting fat, chasing money that's all but worthless now. Instead, my survivalist courses and self-defense classes have proven prescient. In hindsight, learning to shoot a bow and arrow might have been the single biggest stroke of good luck in my life. A close second is being one of those rare liberal-minded folks who saw the value of guns.

At close range, after a 12-gauge, there's nothing like a 0.44-caliber traditional double-action revolver for taking down a zombie. Always go for the headshot. At a distance, a good .30-06 rifle with a reliable scope is essential. From high ground, you can take them out like deer from a blind.

If I laughed anymore, I'd laugh at the irony of having been one of those paranoid, insane people in the "civilized" world, because now I'm one of the best-prepared, canny ones in this post-apocalyptic shitshow.

It's not like we needed zombies to threaten our well-being; we did plenty well, before, when people were just figuratively mindless, following idiot leaders, allowing others' rights to be run over roughshod, never speaking up against any injustice but perceived personal slights. We had every chance to be decent, to create an ethical, conscientious society to everyone's benefit. We didn't. Greed and exploitation prevailed. We deserve nothing less than perpetual misery and to go extinct. What a waste of potential we are, as a species. What a failure of promise.

I prefer it this way, though. How it is now. Gone are the fake politenessness that veiled, very poorly, the hatred and invective underneath. Now, it's kill or be killed. Living or undead, everyone is the threat they've always been, but the chintzy, garbage varnish has been stripped away. It's not like people still won't lie to your face, try to make an alliance with you long enough for you to drop your guard so they can shoot or stab you in the back and take your stuff, but the absence of civilization's other trappings—comfort, love, friendship—strips away any incentive to be suckered by snake-tongued frauds. Anyone who comes within range of a bullet who doesn't show me the utmost complicity and doesn't offer me some obvious benefit goes down. I'm not fucking around. The only justice system that matters is animal law. It's the only one that's ever been fair.

I was robbed of my innocence as a child. I didn't grow up with any sense of safety in the world. My bubble was burst before I even had a chance to enjoy it. I went through my days resenting everyone who had never been molested, never been raped, never been hit, never been denigrated by someone who was supposed to protect them. I'd always wanted to slap the blinders from their pampered faces. Well, nature did it for me.

Now, the world perfectly reflects the horror I've always seen in it. I feel safer, now, than I ever did before. Now, it truly is a game. One I can play. The only concern I have is to see how long I can last before I have to eat my gun; I intend to stay dead, when my time comes.