Day 9: Zombies

Genre: Dark Humor
Universe: Life, After Life
Rating: PG-13 / TW: Mentions of lost limbs, zombies
 

     Jonah was tired of the screams. He was tired of hearing about new threats every day, tired of running away, tired of trying to find food in an unforgiving post-apocalyptic world.

     But mostly he was tired of his left foot falling off constantly.

     He had tried everything. Hot glue, super glue, tight Ace bandages, surgery-grade thread, duct tape… Once he had even wrapped his whole foot and leg in a plaster cast just to keep them together, but the itching was unbearable after a few weeks and he had no choice but to saw it off. (The cast, not his leg. That wouldn’t have made anything better.)

     The zombie movies he had watched in his youth had made becoming a zombie look like so much fun! He had joined so many “zombie walks” as a teenager, had dressed up as a zombie for Halloween for fun, it was always a good laugh! But becoming one, well, that was a whole other story. Especially after a cure was found and nobody was scared of him anymore. He went from being a respectable threat to a backyard pest virtually overnight.

     Well, of course there were the anti-vax people. You could still turn them, but their numbers were dwindling. Those who hadn’t been caught (Facebook was still really useful for finding the overly vocal ones, if your fingers still worked well enough) had started to wise-up and get their shots. So that line of work was slowly coming to an end.

     Jonah knew he couldn’t just linger and groan around his apartment forever. His girlfriend Angie had been turned a few weeks before him, in fact she had found him afterwards and gave him what he affectionately called his “love bite” that put him down this path. So, yeah, Angie had actually managed to secure a job through this program the government had started. Office work, even.

     She said it wasn’t half bad. They didn’t expect you to be able to do much, so it was really low energy work for pretty good pay. And that was important, because the landlords were starting to demand rent again. Being undead didn’t give you a free pass to an apartment - in fact, they were starting to set extra fees, claiming Zombiefolk were more of a “risk”, with the whole leaking body fluids and occasional smell. Jonah found it pretty insulting, but he truthfully didn’t know if he smelled bad anymore - he had lost his nose three months ago at a party.

     Getting a job again wasn’t a bad idea. He didn’t like the idea of having to wear a mouth-guard, though. Why couldn’t the NonZoms trust him not to bite anyone? He didn’t even like the taste of raw flesh. It’s not like becoming a zombie changed your taste buds THAT much and he had been vegan for five years before turning.

     So, yeah, the vegan thing kinda went out the window for a bit, but now he was on the right path again - veggies, mostly, with cadaver rations from people who donated their bodies after death. Nice folk.

     He had hoped becoming a zombie would have made life simpler, but it had just given him more questions than answers. Jonah sighed and flopped over on his couch. The TV played some show he didn’t care about and he felt his foot slide off the bone again, hitting the floor with a wet thump.