At Least He's Not On Fire: A Tour of the Things That Escape My Head Read Online Free PDF Page A

I really didn’t want to grab a sword and just go driving around on the outside chance that this was just a random shooting, but I knew I had to get the fuck back inside one way or the other. If this was a random shooting, the random shooter was still pretty fucking nearby and I was not in the mood to get head-stumped myself.
    So I ran inside. This time I did not eat shit on the root from the pine tree, and made it inside like an Olympic sprinter. I do remember being really pissed at myself because I left the slider open and my frigging cat Otis was sitting right on the fringe watching me the time. I didn’t want him to get out, as he’s an inside cat. He’s a Maine Coon, so he’s a beefy guy, but I woulda been pissed if he got hit by a car, or shot by a psycho with a twelve gauge. Seems like a reasonable concern considering the prior events, right? Whatever dude. I love my cat. He’s my homeboy.
    So by then I’d tried dialing 911 like 4 times. I had the number for the police station already in my contacts so I called that line, and I got their automated response. The emergency choice just routed me to 911, and I was right back where I started. At that point I knew shit was bad. Can’t be a coincidence. I hit the tv on and there it was, the EAS message. You know that irritating noise you hear when they’re testing the emergency system? And very fucking rarely is there ever an emergency. I mean I guess in the midwest when they get tornadoes, or in the south when a hurricane is coming it’s more relevant than here. All we ever get is shit like “emergency snowstorm warnings,” or shit like road closures or accidents.
    I’ll never forget the message from that day:

    State and local agencies are reporting widespread attacks on citizens across the region. Authorities are advising people to stay inside, lock their doors, bar their windows and only open doors for known friends and family who respond intelligently.

    That was it. No mention of a virus, aliens attacking, zombies, vampires, or any such nonsense. I mean, I know now after having seen it a few hundred times we’re dealing with zombies, but that message had no info at all. For the astute horror fan though, that’s when I knew it was “on.” You know, as in “it’s on like Donkey Kong.” I tried calling my girlfriend, both on her cell phone, and at her work extension, but no dice. I’m pretty fortunate in that I don’t panic, like, ever. I’ve got years of experience dealing with violence, and I just don’t lose my cool when the shit hits the fan. I’m the kind of dude you want making decisions in dangerous situations. Enough about me, I’m writing history now. More about me later when I have less to write about.
    I knew she was dead. Or at least, damn close to it. None of the channels would work so I grabbed my laptop and fired it up. After connecting to my network I went to all the news websites and immediately found out I was right. Picture after picture after cell phone video after news broadcast. All showing the zombies. Of course, no one had the fucking balls to call it like that. People were calling it everything but. Theories abounded everywhere I pointed the mouse. But I knew. You could see it. They were dead already, and didn’t attack others until they’d passed on. I knew I needed to know a few things immediately about whatever it was that was doing this, so I got all scientific, and went to the CDC website.
    They were on the ball, thankfully, and had the info as best as they could, already up. I needed to know a few things specifically:

    • Transmission. How did it get transmitted? According to the CDC transmission occurred only via bite. Scratches did not seem to pass along the sickness/curse/virus/evil. Further, they had confirmed that the illness did not spread to non-human victims. Apparently a farm in Pennsylvania had all their cows eaten by the zombies and they stayed dead. (Of course later on I realized that this was somewhat