I Never Had My Zombie Apocalypse

Leaves changing colors, the chill of morning lasting until sundown, the threat of EEE disappearing as the mosquitoes die off, it must be fall. It must be October. It must be Halloween.

With the holiday upon us, I find myself reflecting on those creatures who have haunted my imagination for years; who caused me to sleep in my closet out of fear and right a “return to sender” note on my hand, just in case. The walking dead. Zombies.

I’m not entirely sure zombies struck a chord with me. I didn’t even give them much thought until I was about seventeen. The night I watched my first zombie movie, I couldn’t sleep. I grabbed my over-sized beanbag chair and brought it into my bedroom closet, keeping the door closed with anything I could find. There, my eyes remained open, knowing full well that I had trapped myself. If zombies came, attacked my family, turned them into undead, I would be stuck in the closet, unable to get out. My room was too high to jump and not injure myself. I had no escape exit. That weekend, I joined my friend for a music festival and we stayed in a cabin, away in the woods with a sadistic tree constantly dragging its branches along my window. When I returned home, my newest magazine had a half-rotted zombie on the cover. They were everywhere and I was under-prepared.

It was then that I started planning my escape routes. I memorized where I run to, which cute girl from school I would rescue, how I would live. My plans were many, in order to have alternatives to any situations. I would find a double-decker bus and make it a traveling home; I would make it to the roof at work and live off the remains of the cafeteria. When I had my own apartment, I was going to take a sledge hammer to all the staircases and cut a hole from each floor leading down to the first. From there, I would attach a rope and climb down to raid the convenience store for food on a need basis. After I had plundered the shop, I would leave town on a bike and make my way north to fortify a more permanent location.

These were my plans and thoughts for years. Zombies were a real fear. The bat under my bed was not for burglars, but for the undead. What kind of man lives like this? How paranoid was I and how worse would I become? After awhile, my eccentric phobia waned and I was able to rejoin society as a semi-productive member of society.

Was it my fear of conformity, of being lost in the crowd? Maybe I was afraid of being chased with nowhere to go. These days, I think I was just longing for adventure, for a social shift to reshape the world. In all my scenarios, I was the hero and I lived through the apocalypse. My world was falling apart around me and I couldn’t see much light down the tunnel. For a high school dropout, the world doesn’t have a lot to offer you anymore. My chances of success were slim and, if you asked, I had no answers. Such a situation as zombies destroying the world and leaving the status quo fresh was slightly attractive. Is it sad that my life was so in pieces that I craved the dead to walk just so I would have purpose?

In the end, zombies never came and my God sorted my life out for me, all without the use of undead monsters. That doesn’t mean zombies are gone from my mind. Old habits die hard and I still find myself planning my escape routes. I always make sure my friends and family are prepared to remove my head if I am turned and promise them I would do the same for them. The what-if scenarios still play through my mind and, if you search for “Eric and Brendan’s Zombie Blog” on Youtube, you’ll see my theories play out on video. Just because my life doesn’t need zombies doesn’t mean I’m going to lower my defenses. Once I do that, the walking dead has already won.