Day Two

I took a little hiatus from writing to rejoin my compatriots, and our ranks have since swelled. The survivors I mentioned in my last entry are now undead, and, to be frank, I think they are finding it a far more engaging existence. They apparently spent the last three weeks inside that building, living off of candy bars and soft drinks. Tell me the truth, do you consider that living? While they were fighting like animals over the last three skittles in the bag, I've been out enjoying this pleasant, late summer weather.

I was in the crowd that finally managed to break through their fortifications, and the conditions we found inside the office were atrocious; I would argue we were doing the group a favor. They had taken to using the cubicles as toilets - there isn't any running water - and the place was positively malodorous, and if a fellow who is constantly surrounded by the reek of decaying flesh can identify still a worse scent, I think that's saying something.

Even up until the end, the poor saps were begging for their lives; it is amazing what one will go through to prolong the beating of the heart. I will betray that I, dear readers, felt a small tug of compassion, of sympathy, for when I was alive, and became aware of the growing zombie "infestation," (now, I find it hard to understand why I was so thoroughly aggrieved by the whole thing), I resorted to methods that I am not proud of to survive - but that is another story for another time. I was discussing the survivors. We had taken most of the living when one of the men decided to shoot himself, rather than become a zombie.

I'm going to take a moment, because I always get frustrated when confronted with such a situation. It's not just the needless taking of a life (and the ruining of a fine plate with the bitter taste of gunpowder); it's insulting. Why do the living think that existence as a zombie is so negative? Yes, maybe some of the higher mental faculties suffer in transition to undeath, but who really thinks that being "smart" and being "happy" are synonymous? As a zombie, you no longer have a fear of death – mortality, that limitation, goes right out the window! And so what if the trade-off is an edacious urge to engulf living tissues! The victims, or so they see themselves, will soon enough be right there with you, shoulder to shoulder. Some zombies even, for I cannot believe myself the only one of my kind, may be blessed with the remnants of an intellect, if not one keener than when they were alive. I think my mind something of a burden, to be honest; unlife was easier when I didn’t feel a pang of concern while meeting the eyes of my latest meal.

My frustration goes further, because the very act of shooting oneself in the head shows blatant disregard for the complexity of the human brain. Movies and books about zombies have it only half-right. Yes, you can “kill” a zombie, per se, by destroying the brain, but one must destroy the brain outright and completely. One cannot simply maim the brain. The undead don’t require the function of, now, such vestigial organs as a heart or lungs. Yes, the digestive tract is still important, but the zombie digestive system can be better likened to a compost heap (albeit one that breaks down matter extraordinarily quickly) than to the human digestive system you are familiar with.

In short, we need very little of our brains to actually function, since, in majority, we are content with lumbering around and feasting. And clearly, when the fellow decided to unload his weapon into the pinnacle of his mortal frame, he wasn’t considering this.

In short, he is now one of us, although a little vacant looking, even for a zombie.