Days 1-3

Day 1 - Sounds

Some said it would come with a bang.
Others reckoned, a whimper.
Neither was true.

It came with snow.

Two kinds, actually. First the television fuzzed up.
I didn't think anything of it then, but the most ominous
silences

are oft overlooked.
I got tired of waiting for the signal, so I stepped out to my porch
to find the flakes dancing their way to the earth.
It had been years since I'd seen snow. I threw on a robe,
made some coffee, then sat outside to watch.

If I had known that the reason the cable went out was because
the communications tower was toppled
in an explosion, a valiant but futile effort
to obliterate those tainted
by the outbreak
before they could spread the putrefaction
which marked the flesh of the freshly undead-
I would have been far less calm than I was at that moment.

This most likely could have been avoided. Someone should have done
just the tiny smidgen of math necessary to determine
that Larry King was far too old to still be alive,
that he had been a zombie since the early nineties, and
it was only a matter of time before he bit someone.

However, I knew nothing at that moment.
I simply watched the snowflakes parade through their brief existence,
thinking they had life pretty much figured out. And I though of the last time
I had seen snow, when I was with my parents, and I decided
to take the trip to see them the next day. Of course,
at the time I was unaware of
the state of the freeways.

When the end comes, they said, you will know it.
When the end comes, you will feel it

you will hear it, they said.

But I heard nothing,
literally nothing
as they made their way through my yard
leaving prints like hollow echoes
in the virgin snow.

Day 2 - Stock

Time to take stock of things.

1. I am alive.
2. There are zombies.

That's pretty much it.
Everything else falls somewhere between
petty and I-don't-care-how-hungry-I-get-the-grocery-stores-
-are-now-filled-with-things-that-want-to-eat-me.
I was told they would probably be in there,
but I tried once anyway
and learned that clichés like that have become clichéd with good reason.
Those fetid creatures don't care about my hunger; they have their own.
And since my diet does not include brains,

they refuse to relate. I will find a way
to bridge that gap. I know it is possible because the dead do speak,
though only amongst themselves. The living don't know the language
but I have heard their crumbling phonetics
and the prosody of their moans
fettered to decay.
A lack of communication was inevitable, but
I have found the Rosetta Stone.

Well, it's not so much a stone
as it is a gun.

Day 3 - Shards

No, I tell myself. No,
there is no trace of him left
in there.

I must think in abstracts,
reality is too difficult now:
the soul is what makes a person,
the body's just
a shell.

(I find that it is easier to believe in the soul lately.)

But I don't remember a soul,
I just remember his face.

The same face now drooling as this counterfeit body
drags itself to me
slow but deliberate,
as if I held an answer.
That cannot be my cousin in there,
his legs would feel the glass shards
flaying his thighs. He was neat and proper,
and always composed,
his hands would not claw at the dirt
like that.

That is not him.
It's really that simple. Some bastard
has copied his scowl and limbs
and is defiling his name and-
what will his children think?!
For the sake of posterity
I should blow this impostor to hell with the revolver
I just lifted from the remains of my uncle's home. His father.
No one was there...of course not. They all ran for it, and they
sure as shit took him with them
so this undead thing crawling before me
is just lying to my eyes
and therefore belongs in my sights.
All I have to do is
move my index finger an inch through the trigger
but- goddamnit, he is still wearing his Beatles shirt.
We used to listen to them

hiding at birthday parties from our siblings and other cousins,
as we were the only males in our generation. He idolized that band,
and I got the impression then
that he heard a kind of freedom in those songs, that he took more from them
than I or anyone else ever could.

And now, he is looking at me with eyes
like John's,

like George's,

but all he can hear today is the sound of my heart
also scraping along
the glass bound with his reflection.

Happiness is a warm gun.
Cowardice is cold, and there are many ways to find it.
This is one.