Chapter 1: Grocery Shopping
This house, man. Whole lotta memories. Spent all my life dreaming that one day I'd make it big, one day I'd look in a mirror somewhere far, far away and find myself. But that wasn't the reality I came to live with. Life changes, but the Earth spins the same. I'm still looking in the same mirror and I don't even know who I'm looking at. It wouldn't be all that bad, if it weren't for the fact that I'm the only person left to see. In a world that burned down in chaos, I'm the only man left in the peaceful wake of what lay beyond. And so I do what any other 20-something year old bum would do regardless, absolutely jack shit.
"What's life without other people like?" You might ask. Well, I assume you think it's lonely, sad, empty, and soulless. But you're wrong. On the contrary, it's quite amazing. I'm not on anybody's leash. I can do whatever I want. Stress? Never heard of her. No school, no 9-5, hell no. I'm on my own time, I'm free. I mean yeah I do miss having people to talk to, sometimes I can be a little upset with nobody being there, and yeah I find my actions meaningless without other people being around to give them meaning. But, and hear me out, how is that any different from the regular ass world of before anyways? If you disagree with me, I hate you. Swear to you, I was barely visible back then. Pretty girls walked right past, friends drifted in and out, and don't try to tell me you found meaning in the monotony of capitalism. You're probably a rich, popular, good looking, great person if you were enjoying that kinda life and good for you man, but I have to say fuck you.
So anyways, this one night right? I woke up to the usual, the damned slamming their fists trying to break into my house. I opened my blinds and peered down to look at my front porch surrounded by what once were my neighbors. Everyone had a bit of a blue-green tint to them as they rotted away. I'm sure they're just dying to know my skincare routine. I could still pick out their faces from the crowd and reminisce on the good ol' days. That old guy down there with a torn off leg and half his jaw missing? He used to give king sized candy bars on halloween. Loved that guy. Next to him was this girl with her arms twisted backwards, every few seconds she let out a blaring screech. Went to school with her for nearly all my life without ever talking to her once. I don't even know her name. Oh! All the guys I used to play basketball with came out too. I'd put my money on this flesh eating lineup over the lame ass Celtics anyday.
Where was I? So, I'm staring out my window looking at the usual, getting all nostalgic and shit for a life never coming back. I feel this, small, but bright as hell flash in the corner of my eye. I just instinctively look around for where the hell that came from, and I see… her. I blink and then there's nothing. Back to the empty yard and the groaning green goblin gang shining under the porch lights. I didn't know who or what I just saw, but beautiful was the first word that came to mind. And sure as hell that word pitched a tent and stayed there.
When you're alone for all this time, things get kinda confusing I guess. I mean, I saw a glowy chick who just magically disappeared. At that point you gotta question if you're going insane. And then if I am going insane, what do I do? Hit up a therapist zombie? Read a DSM-V? Break into a CVS, steal some schizophrenia meds and pray? I opted to not call myself crazy, or rather, that I was a perfectly fine and normal amount of crazy, instead.
Way back in the day, I used to stare in horror at my zombified extended cast clawing at my front door waiting for them to go. But I realized something, they knew when I'm looking. They knew I was here, they knew I was scared, and so they knew to keep pushing their luck. Now I just wave at my friends and close the blinds. They go away eventually. Eventually I become invisible to them, like the good ol' days.
I shut the blinds, and headed downstairs for a lil late night snack. You'd think a guy like me just eats whatever he can find, but no, sadly enough the last man alive still tracks his calories. I miss early in the apocalypse, when I could still nab fresh fruit from the grocery store. Non-perishable foods make me wanna perish. And yet when I opened my pantry to find only empty cans I was too half-assed to throw away, I couldn't help but be a little annoyed. I had to go grocery shopping.
I darted back upstairs and spent just about ten-ish to twenty minutes in the mirror trying on clothes. It's not all that often you go out in times like these, so I try to look spiffy. Who knows? Maybe a pretty zombie might wanna bite, can't give her the ick with a bad outfit, right? Yeah, I won't lie it was more like a good forty five minutes cycling through outfits until I settled on the basic flannel over hoodie combo and headed back down. I slipped my feet right into my shoes; I pulled the laces out of them so I wouldn't end up tripping. Obviously I can't do that in these times, maybe a zombie would think I'm proposing if she saw me fall to the ground on one knee. I grabbed a walking stick to keep all the zombies at an arm's distance because I'm not touchy like that either.
The last thing I needed before I went out was the first thing on my mind all the time: my radio. I had it sewn inside of a backpack, with a microphone dangling from the side and an antenna jutting out top. The contraption to me meant adventure, it meant reaching out to the new world, it meant leaving my shell. I spent so much time scared, silent, and then scared of my own silence. If I'm not alive, I don't know what would become of me. If I'm the last man alive, I can't act undead like the rest of the world. I express myself, I tell stories, and I do what I feel like not in the hopes that anyone will answer but in the hopes that I can continue to ask. That was a mouthful? Okay fine don't read that, skip it. Don't even read the rest of this, damn.
I dialed the radio in, FM 102.7, and strapped the mic to my shoulder. I threw the backpack on, and held my cane from the middle in case I needed a quick swing. The silence on the other side of the door said I didn't really need all that extra stuff. I was right, everyone kinda moves on with their corpse days and forgets about me eventually. Funny thing is, I always left the door unlocked. They were too stupid to try the doorknob. Go figure, if someone was smart enough to try, maybe I would wanna meet them.
I stepped into the still and calm night air. The way I huffed and breathed it in you'd think I was a teenager delivered straight to his mango flavored vape heaven. The air breathed life right back into me. Things get stale when you stick to routine, there was something about the open endedness of stepping outside that was like a nice reset. When the world takes away your options, make your own choices.
Walmart was a bit further away but I'd already sucked out all the junk I like from Harris Teeter over time. A life without sour-cream chips and chocolate cereals is like a prison sentence. A holy pilgrimage to Walmart was demanded. I tapped my mic and cleared my throat.
"He-Excuse me-H-Hello! Hi! It's me again! Welcome back to Radio Nowhere! Excited? I sure am. Guess where we're going today? Walmart! Let's get on our way woo!" I said into the radio, and if you think I was trying to sound like one of those youtube vloggers or podcaster douches then you are absolutely right. Because I'll be damned. I didn't really know how to talk normally this deep into the lonely life that I've lived.
I took a good glance at the space in my yard where the glowing lady had appeared. No trace, not even a footprint in the grass. "You know, fun fact about grass: It's kinda like the zombies of plants kinda." I droned on to my known audience of nil and began to trek out of my neighborhood, walking in the dead middle of the main street roads. "Yeah, so grass is new thing relatively. The T-rex? Never saw grass. Yup, crazy. They really just invade other plants' spaces, take all the ground's nutrients, parasite off the land. and make things a whole lot less lively. Which is weird though, it sucks ass at growing. Humanity wasted so much time, water, money all that on a parasite that can't even grow on its own. All for what? Means nothing now that all the cracks in the concrete are filled with random shrubs. Nobody could tell me the names of any of these shrubs, I sure as hell can't, yet look at them out here winning. I guess the shrubs are kinda like the plant versions of me, ha!" I laughed alone in the middle of a long, winding, and dark street. And then I wasn't alone.
It was like the sun was setting but this time it was on the horizon of the road, just in reach for me to find out about its light. "Hold on a second, I see some…thing," I said, holding out on the hope that I wasn't alone. My body tipped forward first as my legs pushed off to catch up. I was bolting right for this light and it was only crying brighter as I closed in. Before I knew it, I was sprinting with my eyes half closed. Squinting to not go blind. The brightness enveloped everything I could see. Then I saw her. I reached my arm out in disbelief still in a full sprint. She reached out right back.
My blood boiled to my head. Was I not alone? Did I find an angel? I was reaching out for heaven and when my hand reached hers, I clasped onto the warmth and she grabbed my hand right back. And when my smile just began to stretch and the distance between our hands caved in, the lights disappeared. It was sudden like the pop of a balloon you put too much pressure on, but it was quiet. "Who" The word escaped my mouth before I realized. And then for some reason I'm not all too sure of, I felt ashamed.
You know that feeling, when like you wake up in the middle of nowhere dazed as hell after getting black out drunk? Neither do I. But, it must've been something like how I felt just after that because next thing you know I was plastered on the pavement. The rays between the trees from the sunrise eventually caught my eyes and woke me.
I got myself up and took a look around. Then, I looked around again. And again. The angel was sitting in front of me, and my tired ass could barely understand what I was seeing. I looked around one more time, until we were both just staring at each other face to face. This time she was a tolerable amount of glowy. She had one thing suppressing her brightness across her shoulders and behind her: my radio backpack.
She tossed me the mic cord. I fumbled it around like I was playing hot potato before I got a grip. And when I put my attention back on the angel, I saw her mouth wide open and she screamed radio static. Not like the words radio static, she just sounded like crshshshshsh. I know I'd recognize it because it's the same static silence that plays while I spend hours across channels looking for maybe one sound from the world around me. This girl was mocking me, and I was mesmerized.
"Hellooooo?" I said to her, furrowing my brows and tilting my head. I hadn't talked to anyone in so long so I made sure all of my social cues were exaggerated and obvious. I looked into her eyes, and she was looking anywhere but me. No, she wasn't looking at all. Her eyes were moving like dials. Rolling bit by bit as they sifted through radio stations. For a magic glowing human radio, she was quite pretty. And so I sat there, staring at her for about a solid fifteen minutes. Then I thought to myself: Hey! This is slightly concerning, and doesn't make much sense! I should do something! Many might revel in my genius. If you find yourself to be among this crowd, I suggest you stop reading before this great mind of mine makes you feel as if you are a pitiful nothing.
I karate chopped her in the shoulder. "Give me my shit back," I politely asked. She yelped. I felt a slight wave of remorse as she scrambled a few feet away from me. Emphasis on slight, because at this point I was a wrecking ball of pent up nerves and curiosity getting the best of what once was the well mannered, sociable guy I used to be. I held up my hands empty and open to her, to show that I meant no more harm.
The glowing angel gave me a side-eyed look, not one of bitterness or fear but more of a "what the fuck do you have mental issues bruh?" kind of look. It's mostly in the eyebrows that's how y'know. She took the backpack off graciously, one strap at a time, then gently set it on the asphalt. I took that as a sign to step forward and snatch my beloved backpack back.
The angel snapped one arm forward with her palm out to stop me like I was a velociraptor in one of the new Jurassic Park movies. I stopped in my tracks and showed my disapproval by hissing and flailing my hands around at her. She unzipped my backpack, exposing all the sensitive wirings I spent years deliriously working on and repairing.
"Hey, Hey, Hey, don't touch? You understand? You speak english? No puedes tener mí backpack you… thing!" I said to her, who was most definitely ignoring me. She put her foot into the backpack. I was ready to go apeshit on her, but I was frozen in place. I stood there watching in absurd awe as she stuffed herself into my radio.
Peering into the bag, to my surprise I saw nothing. Nobody in there, just my radio backpack laying on the street open and exposed to the world in a way it should be ashamed of. I could ramble onto you about my thoughts at the time, but I had none. Mouth open, I drooled into my radio. It felt like my brain had rotted with all the sensory overload of today. Maybe old people were right, it was all them phones and social medias that turned the world into zombies. If only they were as high and mighty as they claimed to be, I'd have a retirement home to provide me with companionship. But, no they were on facebook posting about their grandchildren's graduation ceremonies and making racially insensitive comments. Everyone's sort of the same, right? We're all people, only from different perspectives. At the time, I realized this angel probably wasn't the most absurd thing to happen in my life, if she was real. I thought to myself that she was probably a person, same as me, with wants, desires, likes, and dislikes, all the same as me. So I zipped up the bag and swung it back on. Maybe she needed something or wanted something from me - in that case I knew she would've probably appreciated it if I took her more courteously and seriously. If she was real.
I decided I'd let her hide in the backpack for as long as she needed after our rough introduction. I've never been good at first impressions when I really want them to count, and language barrier or not, whoever this angel is, she was someone and I've had no one. So I set out to continue my trek to Walmart, holding out hope that she is real and she shows herself once again.
Moving onwards, I reached into the deepest parts of my mind, remembering the directions. My head raced with memories of errands and back to school trips, each one starting and ending with my groaning and whining. All I ever did was fuss and drag my feet growing up, I was the kinda kid that made your parents realize they don't need any more children in the family. Speaking of which, I never really knew what happened to mine. Well, I had a good idea of what probably happened… but what good would that do to think about. Nah, I'd rather choose to believe maybe they're just living a happy life without me somewhere far away.
After reminiscing on some memories, I'd crane my neck back to check my radio backpack and give it a little pat just in case. No response. Quite reminiscent of my experiences with instagram DM's. I assumed that could mean one of two things - she got fried to death by the radio circuits or I had gone demented and she was never real. Either conclusion didn't hit me too hard because I was too busy feasting my eyes upon the great American paradise. I reached Walmart.
You can probably recall what a Walmart used to be like inside pre-apocalypse. It was like a bustling jungle of goods inside, huge aisles filled with everything from obesity to diabetes. More relevantly, it was filled with people, and what that meant in my new day and age was more zombies. The new world is similar in ways like that and different in others. Y'know I can roam the streets and pass out there without a scratch - you did that back in the day you'd probably wake up in a new country without your kidneys or your dick. It makes sense though, why the fuck would a zombie just walk on out into the middle of the streets and start roaming. No, they're a little more programmed than that. They know where the people used to be, where they like to go, so they'll sit in places like this and wait for idiots like me. Man, oh, man, getting run up on by a zombie was scary as hell at first. Their flesh was still tough, not soft and rotten like they are now.
Now? Now I walk in with my chin up - no fear nor anger, only straight confidence, and I did just that. Surprisingly the automatic doors still slid open for me. They screeched away their rust, airing out my presence to all who awaited their next meal. Hell, I was like a sizzling fajita at a restaurant everyone stares at while the waiter walks by. The damned inharmoniously growled in response. Some, faint and distant. Others, close enough to distinguish each noise to each walking corpse. They stared, mouths swung wide open as if I was just going to hop into their esophagus for them. I could tell they hadn't moved in so long, seeing only so much as a slight stumble as they warmed up their joints out of hibernation. Pieces of flesh dripped onto the floor. I wiped the sweat of my hands onto my jacket before getting a good grip on my walking stick. That angel girl was nowhere to be seen, and hopefully it stays that way for a good while. Shit was about to hit the fan, and I was gonna get my damn groceries no matter what. I charged into Walmart.