Zombies Earning Their Hunger by Brian S. Wheeler
Chapter 7 - A Zombie Choosing a Tool
Rose didn’t peek through her window’s curtains during those early, dark mornings immediately following Ollie Turner’s horrible suggestion. She suddenly lacked the bravery to scorn those limping men and women, children and elderly, who moved so slowly down the street, dragging their implements and tools behind them, as they progressed towards whatever duty Rose feared to imagine. Why did any of them shuffle down that road? Was the hope to appease their appetite all it took to mobilize such a parade?
Rose hated herself. She was ashamed. She had stared out of that window for so many years, and she had failed to see what was right in front of her.
She had failed to see that those zombies were her.
The zombies were her neighbors. The zombies were those who she had once sat beside in church. The zombies were those who once held the town’s lost positions of employment, those who had long ago been happy to work overtime, often no matter if their paycheck didn’t reward them for the extra effort.
“I have to go back to him, Connor. You were right to always mistrust him. But I have to go back to that store. I’m just too hungry.”
Rose felt another of the bugs scamper over her foot, another bug squirming inside of her socks looking for a way back out of her clothing to find another place in the debris that crowded Rose’s home. She never removed her heavy coat anymore. She never removed her cap. No matter that she often felt the terrible bugs crawling through her hair, no matter she felt them crawling along her arms.
The bugs were everywhere. They crawled up her walls. They crunched beneath her feet whenever Rose was forced to step upon the plastic sacks that covered the floor from her sofa to the bathroom, where still more of the pests squirmed out from the drain. She no longer opened the cupboards, nor did she dare open a tin of cat food. Even her feline friends had abandoned her to her rubble of a home, for the infestation of those bugs too painfully nibbled at their paws.
The food was gone. That swarm of insects perverted whatever remained in the cardboard boxes.
Somehow, Rose found the willpower to descend those steps leading into the basement. Somehow, she found the courage to step off of that final step though the naked lightbulb suspended by the orange extension cord threw garish light upon a floor covered in the bug infestation. Desperation made even old Rose very brave.
She didn’t faint when the bugs circled her wrist when she lifted a hammer from one of Connor’s old tool chests. Her knees didn’t collapse as she turned and retraced those steps up from the basement. The hammer didn’t feel so heavy within her grasp. Her arms could still lift the head high enough to swing it down for a satisfying impact. She had no idea what she might do with such a tool. She wondered if there would be a foreman to shout her instructions. Rose thought it didn’t matter. That hammer was a tool, and it would have to be enough to give Rose the opportunity to earn her right to hunger.
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