Then Milt’s ear canals suddenly cleared a little, and he heard a faint gurgling coming from somewhere nearby. He rolled over, and, focusing on the sound, began to crawl toward it. He scraped himself on rocks and through bushes as he went, but he felt nothing. His body felt like a shell that could be sloughed off and remade, and he was unconcerned about it—except that he did need to water it.
The sound was getting louder, but his body was slowing down. The more he crawled, the stiffer he became, and the harder it was to keep up the crawling.
Milt paused to rest, thinking that might help, and saw something that he didn’t want to. There was fluid oozing out of the cracks in his skin. A pale yellow fluid was seeping out of him, like motor oil.
He tried to crawl some more, but his arms and legs seized up and became rigid, and he collapsed in the dirt. Though it must have been his body cramping up, it didn’t feel that way. It didn’t hurt, but was simply immobile.
As luck had it, it wasn’t dirt that Milt had collapsed in. It was mud. Milt’s slowing mind realized this, and also that the gurgling sounded like it was only a few feet away—so close.
Milt felt the seeping fluid leaving him, and he understood that he could control it—not the stuff that was already outside of his body, but the stuff still in it. There was some still in there, deep down.
He focused, and bade the fluid to gather in his neck, throat, and jaw. When it had, he opened his mouth and forced his head into the mud, as deep as he could make it go.
There he drank.
When he had drunk enough to form more fluid within his body, he withdrew his face and head from the mud, chewing on the bits left in his mouth.
Milt pondered his current state, being reduced to a kind of prehistoric beastliness, finding sustenance in mud. It was no Snickers nougat, that was for damn certain.
But wait…was it better? He couldn’t believe it, but the mud seemed to be fulfilling some carnal need that even Snickers candy bars didn’t.
It was as if the mud was doing something far more vital for his body than Snickers or Coca-Cola ever did, or ever could. Milt had never imagined that a base substance such as mud could be filled with such incredible powers of revitalization.
As the mud replenished Milt’s system, the stuff in his head began to flow, began to stir, and he understood.
He understood everything about the evolution he had gone through—much more than he ever thought there
was
to understand. So much more, in fact, that even he was humbled by the knowledge he had gained through his experience with the zombies.
Not only had they taken him in and made him one of their own, they had selected him as their leader, placing him at the top of their hierarchy.
Milt had been right at the very outset of the contagion—it had brought his destiny with it. He was the one human with the constitution worthy enough to lead the zombies.
Only...he wasn’t human anymore, no. He knew he had become something else—something better, superior to any human, and, superior even to his quite wondrous former self. As hard a feat as that was to accomplish, he had done it. He had become an even greater, enhanced version of himself.
He was still thirsty, and now he had the strength to crawl the rest of the way to the stream, so he did, and he drank until he was contented.
It was Milt’s first drink of pure water since a mysterious bottle of Evian had snuck into one of his Coca-Cola cases, and that was years ago. The cold flowing water was even better than the mud.
Then he lay down sideways with his body half in and half out of the stream, so that he could continue to soak in the cool water. That was what his body needed—to sop up the stream, all of the stream. Of course that was impossible, but Milt felt like if anyone could do it, he could.
After some moments, Milt raised his head and looked down at his soaking body. He saw that his portliness was much reduced, and that in his prostrate position, his belly did not completely obscure his feet. The tips of his pallid, shriveled toes were visible, poking out of scraggly, torn socks. He wiggled them. Notwithstanding their appearance, they seemed to work just fine, and maybe even better than before.
Milt lowered his head back onto the damp earth and took a long, deep breath. He was startled to note that all traces of his asthma were gone. He took a few more deep breaths, and was astounded that he could breathe in and out fully, with no wheezing. His lungs felt better than they had in years.
There was water in his body and fresh air in the far reaches of his lungs: Milt could not deny that his body had changed.
As he lay there, wiggling his toes and taking the moist air into his apparently rejuvenated lungs, the rest of the previous days’ adventures came back to him.
Once the zombies had taken him in and made him their leader, he had become privy to a sort of collective consciousness, a shared mind—a shared mind that he controlled.
That was the best part. It was like playing
Warcraft
—not
World of Warcraft
—and directing his underlings in battle. The zombies were his chess pieces to move about the world...only now...now he wasn’t sure if there were any left. That insolent, muscle-bound ruffian, Sven, had no doubt destroyed them. That was just like Sven, a hater of zombies if there ever was one.
So, the winds of destiny had come for Milt...to make him great. But, he had originally thought that he would lead the humans against the zombies. Now, knowing that he was to lead the zombies against the humans, he had to confess that he had been short-sighted not to see this prospect earlier. Milt as the zombie commander was an elegant, even brilliant turn of events. He understood that this new station was allotted for him, prearranged somehow.
We all have a role to play, he told himself, and I will play mine to perfection.
Then, Milt’s hearing abruptly returned to its full capacity, and the infernal birdsong that came from all around him made him lose his train of thought.
After a few moments of painful chirruping, Milt remembered the new task that fate had allotted to him. He was to gather and assemble the zombies, and lead a zombie army against the darkness that was humankind.
But what if the zombies were gone? Milt wasn’t sure there were any zombies left now that he was out in the forest by himself.
The thought frightened him, but he knew that they couldn’t be gone. They were a part of him now, waiting to be reborn. He’d been bitten, after all, and here he was.
I
am a zombie, Milt thought, I am…the greatest zombie of all.
The zombies remained. Milt the zombie was proof.
Deep inside, he knew the other zombies would come back, there was a way to get them from out of his own being. He felt this, and knew it to be true. If it was a disease, he was no doubt a carrier of sorts, waiting, lurking in the shadows for the perfect moment to unleash his biological, world-ending agenda once more.
The zombie apocalypse wasn’t over.
It was just about to begin.
Milt smiled, and searched for a bloated pimple to pop. Disappointed on not finding one, he began to plot his revenge against Sven, and against all of humankind.
***
In a similar wooded area not too far away, another pair of eyes opened to take in the sunlight.
Squinting uncomfortably, his body racked with a sickening thirst, the vegan raised a dry, crackling arm, and brought it up to his face. He scratched at the coarse hairs of his handlebar moustache, and began to remember.
TO BE CONTINUED
...