Defending the Town from the Undead

I’m writing this as a form of therapy. I’ve been in prison for nearly 3 years now and let me tell you, it doesn’t get any easier. I hope that someone reads this account of my time with the zombies. Just so long as it means one less person becomes infected.

* * *

I remember it like it was yesterday. We were sitting on our porch enjoying a nice summer evening. Ron had just returned from a flight to New York City and was telling us about his trip while he sipped on his glass of whiskey. He had just made that trip the previous week and said he couldn’t believe how fast the traffic had picked up.

The three of us lived together in an old, two story home in the town of Eden, NY. My name is Patrick Miller and I was born here at this house and have lived here all my life. Ron (my father) and Jon (my brother) had bought the place when Mom died, about 20 years ago now. It was probably close to 100 years old back then, but it sure has held up well.

We didn’t have any kids, we never did, so it was just us three living together like we did since before I can remember. We always knew there would be a day where one of us would have to move out, but we pretended otherwise for as long as possible; pretending that we’d all still be here when I got married or something like that. It wasn’t until recently that reality started to creep up on us and we realized it may be time to think about selling. Ron had even brought up the possibility of moving closer to him and Kim in Florida a few times over the last couple years but none of us wanted to listen to that idea. We laughed it off every time because we were not going anywhere!

I remember thinking how funny it was that Ron mentioned NYC traffic jamming up again right after he had been there himself a week earlier; it seemed like such an ironic coincidence at the time. I joked with him about being cursed or something which made him laugh too, but he quickly said “That wouldn’t be a curse, Patrick! You should see what those people are doing! There’s trash everywhere, graffiti on everything…it looks like a gang took over New York for Christ sake! The police are nowhere to be found either! They may as well be dead for all anyone cares!”

At this point, I was getting pretty annoyed with Ron for being overly dramatic, so I rolled my eyes and told him, "Dad! What do you expect? It's New York City! Of course, it's going to look bad if no one ever cleans anything! They don't even have sidewalks anymore. Did you know they used to call them 'sidewalk states?' Well, they stopped doing that because they were embarrassed by how dirty their sidewalks were back then! That city has gone downhill. Now, they don't even use sidewalks anymore! They use cars instead; they drive right through the streets now instead of walking around them! That place is nothing but chaos anyway - the only thing left is for them to burn it down and start over again! They should really consider rebuilding it with some semblance of sanity this time rather than just creating another dirty, chaotic city! Sure, you can go there if you need something from Tiffany's or whatever, but that place is nothing but an embarrassment to America nowadays. We should do something drastic to save ourselves some embarrassment!"

At this point, I could feel my face burning hot red from anger and frustration as I realized how much I sounded like my dad at his worst moments, when he was drunk, telling everyone his opinion about politics or whatever else was bothering him at the moment when he felt like complaining about things out loud simply to annoy everyone else and ruin their night. It could be so infuriating at times!

Ron laughed at me almost instantly and said, "Save yourself some embarrassment? What are you talking about?! A city full of criminals and riff-raff ruining our country is an embarrassment?!" Then Jon interjected, "Patrick, seriously? What on earth has gotten into you tonight?" To which I replied, "Not God…Obama." And then Ron chimed in with a hearty laugh at his own joke.

Then suddenly, Ron sat straight up with a terrified look on his face before shouting, "Oh no!" He momentarily sat motionless, looking confused as if trying to figure out what had just happened before standing up quickly, repeating, "Oh no, oh no, oh no!" Both Jon and I stood up, asking him what was wrong, but he wouldn't answer us; instead, he ran inside, screaming, "Kim! Kim!" all the while sounding like some kind of injured animal. We could tell he was scared beyond belief more than anything else.

While watching him run inside, all I could think was how strange this behavior was coming from