Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head

The rain wakes me.

Several droplets splashing on my cheeks, sliding down into the socket where my right eye used to be. Something living must be close by, or else my body wouldn’t have woken up. That’s a shame, seeing as I was having the most wonderful dream. Of a lovely day on the beach with my wife and family… all before the outbreak, of course.

One atrophied limb rose up and moved overhead, grabbing hold of some grass to haul it further along the high grass. I close my eyes and reach out into the darkness, probing about for another living soul to speak to. I find three all weak, like myself. They must have been bitten and turned during the Uprising, when the revolution taking place in America masked the undead menace growing in the tenements’. The rich white one percent labeled the plague as “hysteria” and “madness”.

They were partly right.

By the time that the one percent finally learned of the true menace the plague represented, it was too late. The clawed hands were tearing out the throats of the United States owners and masters, devouring them whole as they screamed for mercy. I should know, I ate a rich broker. Or at least my body did. He blamed me once his body reanimated, calling me a “murderous liberal”. I eventually just tuned him out and he wandered away.

They always wander away from me, as I don’t have legs anymore. They were eaten by a group of five young children, all dressed as if they had come from a birthday party.

Figures… I always hated kids.

I reach out to one of the minds, a young Asian man. “Hello there!” I say through our connection.

He just groans internally and externally, shuffling down a dirt path between two large fields of grass, one of which I happen to occupy. The other two are close enough to sense, but not close enough to contact. They’re shuffling along together near the general store that I used to work at. Next to it is a video store where my buddy worked, before he was eaten at the very least. They ate him enough that he didn’t come back. I saw his skeleton, bloody and red, hanging out of the  front story window.

I hear shuffling through the grass and my body stiffens, growing still, coiling up like a viper. I want to cry out, but after being trapped in this skull for so many years, I’ve learned it’s pointless. We may still have our minds, but we don’t have our bodies… nobody has both anymore, except for survivors.

Like the one walking down the dirt path, a handgun raised. He’s muscular, in a tank top that has seen better days. His right arm has a sleeve of tattoos that I can’t quite distinguish. He barks at the zombie standing on the dirt path, the Asian one, to get its attention. It looks up just as the man pulls the trigger.

Blam!

The Asian boys mind pops like a bubble in a stream, vanishing from this world and onto the next. The other zombies close by heard that sound, and they’re moving closer. I can feel them now, a young girl and an older woman. The young girl is off in her own land when I try and contact her, but the older woman is responsive.

“Hello?” She says over the link.

“Hello there! How are you doing?” I ask cordially.

“As well as can be imagined. How long have you been like this?” She asks.

I grimace internally. “Since the beginning, before people even recognized it for what it was.”

“Oh my Lord…” she says, horrified at the thought.

“Yeah, it gets pretty lonesome around these parts now, not many sane people traveling through anymore.”

“You must mean my granddaughter… yes, she’s retreated into her imagination. Been like that for over a year now… it’s so good to have someone to talk to.”

“Well don’t count on it for too long, your likely going to hike out of town or get killed by this survivor here. Can you see him, he’s out of my line of sight.” I say. Trying to pinpoint where the gun-toting maniac is.

“He’s by the tall grass, where the oak tree is growing. He’s moving through the grass. Eyeing me and my granddaughter.” The woman says.

“Oh great, get ready for a show then…”

“Is that where you…?”

“Yeah, I’m by the tree.” I reply just as a boot lands next to my arm. Both arms lash out grabbing his lower leg as my rotting teeth sink into the flesh of the man’s calf muscle, causing him to yell in panic. He aims his gun down, but is knocked down by the body rolling away from the prey, tearing a long strip of meat with it.

“Oh, he’s screaming…” The woman says idly.

“I’ve currently pounced on top of him and am chewing into his neck, one of my arms holding his gun hand down. It’s almost as if my body knows that’s the dangerous one.”

“Creepy how the zombies think, isn’t it?” She says.

“I try my best not to watch, but this thing keeps my eyes open, forcing me to watch it splinter bones and suck the marrow clean. This makes the eleventh survivor my reanimated corpse has laid claim to.”

“You’re worse than a land mine,” the woman chuckles.

“I am,” I say as my body pulls the spinal column from the throat, biting through the thickened nerve cords and vertebrae. “At least with a land mine you can live after stepping oin it. Sure, you’re injured for life, but at least you’re alive.”

I stop and watch as the zombie goes for the eyes of the survivor, then the tongue. Don’t ask me why, they always go for those two first. Must be that their soft tissue, or that their easy to access. Who knows?

Eventually the woman and child shuffle through the long grass, kicking aside sin bleached bones of past victims, to come and join the feast. We eat in silence, and I send up my eleventh prayer to God to have someone come and kill me. Maybe this guys had a buddy or something, someone who’ll notice him missing.

Maybe.