Fiction: "Zombie Death," by Kenneth Quinnell

And then one day, everyone was gone.

I woke up and I was alone. I looked and I looked around, but I couldn't find anyone. I thought that was strange.

At first I thought it was the terrorists. I figured they finally got us. But that didn't make any sense. How could they get everyone else, but not get me?

Then I thought it was the Rapture. I knew I wasn't going to Heaven, but maybe most other people were. That didn't make any sense, either. Most of the people I knew weren't going to Heaven, either, and all of them were gone, too.

I thought it might be some kind of disease. Maybe it was that bird flu I've always heard so much about. Or maybe SARS. Or that disease that killed all those people in that Stephen King novel. But if that were the case, how come there weren't any bodies? And how come the hospitals weren't flooded?

Maybe it was one of those George Romero-kind of things. But where were the living dead? And why weren’t there a bunch of people hanging out at the mall?

Another thing that occurred to me was the idea that I was dreaming. Or in a coma. Or in some kind of government mind-control facility or something like that. I couldn't rule one of those out, except for the dream thing. I knew I wasn't dreaming, because I never woke up. If I were asleep and didn't wake up, then I would be in a coma. If I were in a coma or some kind of Matrix-style mind control thing, I never figured it out. At least not before I died.

* * *

There isn't really much to tell. I actually lasted only about four hours in the brave new world.

I woke up and tooled around the house for a few hours listening to music, eating, shitting, shaving, showering and getting ready.

I was only on the road for about two minutes before I figured out that something was going on. I noticed not one single car on the road, not one pedestrian on the sidewalk and not one animal in the sky or in the grass.

What else was I going to do? I went to work.

Nobody was there. Or so I thought.

I checked Mary's desk, but she wasn't there, obviously. I stopped by to see Steve and Jimmie. Ditto. Then I went by Wilson's office. That's saying something. I hate Wilson. I wouldn't stop by his office if it were the end of the world. Well, maybe in that situation, since that's what happened. But no other time. It really would have to be the end of the world for me to stop by Wilson's office. I did it. He wasn't there, either.

What the heck, I figured, I might as well go down and check in on the maintenance people. If they weren't there, I figured I might as well take the day off. If they weren't there, that meant that nobody was there. They never got the day off. Hell, I think they were forced to work on Christmas. So I figured I'd go see if anyone was home. That was the last bad idea I'd ever have.

* * *

The elevator worked fine. I don't know why I thought it wouldn't work. Everything else had worked that day. The elevator did, too.

I got off and walked into the subbasement. This was a place I had never ventured before. Hell, I'm a mid-level executive with a Fortune 500 company, what would I be doing hanging out with the maintenance people?

I looked around and didn't see much. I went into the break room, the supervisor's office, the bathroom. Nothing.

The last stop was the warehouse. When I opened the door, I almost immediately heard something crash to the ground. Sort of like a lead pipe falling to the concrete floor or something like that.

"Hello? Is anyone there?"

The minute I said it, I felt like an idiot. It was such a cliché thing to say. The exact same thing every victim said in every horror movie.

I did what you might expect. Like all those horror movie victims, I walked cautiously toward the sound. I should've run the other way and got the heck out of there. Since I've been dead, I learned that I would've been right to run away. I'd have still been alive. At least for a little while longer.

Truthfully, I was never really someone who was good in a crisis. I might've made it out of the office building, but I'm sure one of the other things out there would've gotten me sooner or later. I usually freeze like a deer in headlights.

That's pretty much what I did when the thing came at me. I might've screamed. I don't really remember. You'd think that when you were dead, you'd get to remember everything you forgot in life, but it doesn't work that way. If you forgot it, you forgot it. Maybe if I were in Heaven. But it doesn't really seem like they were telling us the truth on that one, either.

So, I rounded the corner to the aisle where I heard the noise. The row was filled with boxes and boxes of pipes and plastic pipes and connectors and the like. I guess this is where they got stuff any time the plumbing had problems anywhere in the building.

The problem was that the thing waiting in the pipe aisle had heard me right before I had heard it. It was slow, but it had the complete drop on me. I was surprised and I froze.

Right after I turned the corner, it was standing right there. I don't know how to describe it. It looked sort of like one of those things from one of the Romero movies, but the make-up was much better. Maybe it was more like something from 28 Days Later or Resident Evil. Either way, it was ugly, bloody and it stuck to high hell.

Then it grabbed me. That's when I knew this wasn't something from a movie and I knew I wasn't asleep. The second it touched me, my skin began to burn. Not like acid, either, this burn was like I was on fire. At the same time, it was like the coldest thing I'd ever felt.

One thing that was like the movies was that the next thing it did was bite me. And it didn't just latch on, it bit me and held tight. And then it ripped the muscle in my left shoulder right off of my body.

Really, you think you know the meaning of pain. You've sprained your ankle. You've broken your arm. You've had kidney stones. You've had something you got from some girl at a Portland convention that made your piss burn. But you've never known anything like the combination of your skin burning and a muscle being ripped from your body. I don't know what you would've done, but I pissed myself. At least that didn't burn.

Everything else burned. The thing let go of my arms, where it grabbed me at first, and grabbed me by the head. Then it bit my nose off. I’m pretty sure I screamed again.

Tears rolled down my face and I shit myself. I'd feel embarrassed about it, but who really gives a fuck how you look when you are being eaten alive. The good news was that when it came back to take a bite out of the side of my head that ripped off most of my right cheek and ear, I passed out.

I never woke up after that, but I continued to feel pain for a while. Then I died.

* * *

You'd think that my story would be over at this point, since the thing won and I'm no longer part of your world. You'd be wrong.

I'm dead, but I'm not really gone.

I don’t know how to explain it, but I know why I haven't moved on. My job now is to warn others. I haven't figured it out yet, but at some point, I will. I did not die in vain, and I will do whatever I can to make sure that others don't follow in my footsteps.