asked.
âYou guys are the ones that heard her call. Didnât she tell you anything else? Not that itâs really going to be all that hard to find her.â
âHow can you say that?â Ron asked. BT got it right away.
âThe zombies, itâs going to be hard to miss them,â he said.
âRight.â
âYou all right, Ron? You look a little green.â I laughed.
We made it through the entire state of Maine without seeing a soul. Iâve heard of ghost towns, never a whole fucking state though. As we passed Portland, the only things we saw moving were small groups of zombies out on patrol. They turned and followed for a bit before they realized we were a meal out of their grasp, and then went back foraging for whatever was left. There had to be holdouts there, or why would the zombies bother? And what could we do about it? I watched the wasteland pass by. It was stranger than I could have ever imagined to be traveling through the end of times. Iâd read tons of science fiction and apocalyptic horror when I was younger, always fantasized about a world with little to no people in it. Sounded glorious back then. What a fool I was. As much as people could suck, it was so much better than this.
Some people were good, some were bad, but most of us had varying degrees of both elements. Did I believe the earth itself would be better without us? Of course, we were a destructive parasite as far as the Great Mother was concerned. Most animals would also celebrate our passing. The lone holdouts being dogs and rats. Cats didnât give a shit about us when we were here; no reason to believe they would care now that we were gone. I donât want to wax poetic because I very rarely live in the past, and Iâm definitely not a poet. The thought of no more music, no more movies, no more books, none of the marvels of manâs imagination coming to fruition was damn depressing. Of course, that also meant no more weapons of mass or even minor destruction, no murder, no crimes against humanity, no greed and all the other less-than-fine qualities of our kind. Was the trade-off worth it?
Weâd effectively taken ourselves out of the loop. We talked about super-volcanoes and meteor strikes being our undoing, but it really was a foregone conclusion that we were going to pull the trigger that would blow us away. Weâd been trying for so long (and man wasnât predisposed to taking ânoâ for an answer) that heâd finally gotten his wish. I donât know what the tipping balance was that made a recovery for human population a possibility, but I had to figure weâd long ago crossed over to the other side. As far as I knew, zombies could survive for years without food, going into their stasis mode to preserve resources. Even if we started to repopulate, we would just activate the zombies again to repeat the cycle of devastation. Weâd scratched a rut into the record, and it was just going to keep playing the same shitty little part of the tune before repeating. Yeah, that was my mindset as we traveled down the road. Then the truck began to slow.
âSomething wrong?â I asked, first looking over to the instrument panel to see if the truck was breaking down. When I realized that wasnât the case, I checked the magazine on my rifle, pulled the charging handle back, and got ready.
âRelax, just some people on the other side of the road. Looks like they had car trouble,â Ron said as he put the hazards on, came to a full stop, and put us in park.
âAre you fucking insane?â I asked. I rolled down my window, ready to get my rifle up and target someone. I noticed that the driver had already gotten behind his car to use as a shield. âThis isnât the morning commute anymore. Theyâll just as soon kill us and take our ride as say âhello.ââ
âI think youâre being a little dramatic.â
Dramatic had not even got