There's a popular perception that zombies are entertaining. Look at all the movies about zombies. Or the video games about zombies. There are novels about zombies. Someone even wrote a zombie survival guide, or something like that.
Let me tell you, there ain't no guide that'll help you when the zombies come. Let me tell you, there's nothing fun about zombies.
First of all, real zombies are nothing like the movies and the games. Sure, they're formerly dead people, sure they're rotten and smelly, and sure they tend to shuffle around and groan a lot. But that's where the similarities end. You know how movie zombies like to bite you and try to eat your brains? Real zombies do nothing like that. No, real zombies try to drag you away. Back to their crypts, their tombs. Real zombies will burst out of their graves, find a victim, then pull them kicking and screaming back to their coffins six feet under. What they do to those poor folks once they pull them under, well, no one knows. No one's ever lived to tell the tale. As far as anyone can tell, none of the victims ever turn into zombies either. They just... disappear.
Second, ever since the zombies started showing up, cemeteries have turned into war zones. People bringing guns and bats and machetes to their local church graveyards, shooting and hacking up any of the walking dead they see. But they can never win, see, because it's not like in the movies. Headshots don't kill zombies, a zombie with a bullet hole between the eyes will drag you back to its grave just the same. Same goes with a headless zombie. Setting them on fire doesn't help either, they don't stay down. It's like they just can't be killed a second time, or something. I even saw some local girls trying to stake the zombies in the hearts. I yelled at them that they got it all mixed up, that they were thinking about vampires, but they wouldn't listen. The group of them, they didn't last ten minutes before the zombies dragged the last of them away.
And finally, these zombies could be anyone, even someone you know. Zombies are the walking dead, see, and if you've got someone you know buried in the local graveyard, well, chances are you'll be seeing them again, in a not-so-friendly reunion. Chances are the next time you see your great aunt Mildred, she'll try to drag you by your hair back to her place of eternal rest. It's really disheartening, you know? To see your loved ones, the people you already said goodbye to and found closure with, spring up and try to kidnap you. It's really depressing. Makes you want to end it all sometimes. But you can't, because deep down you're afraid you'll come back as one of them, and you'll end up hurting someone too. Dragging them away.
Some of the science types down in Washington say it's got something to do with the graves. Like we've been burying too many people underground, or something, and this is how planet Earth is retaliating. Don't make much sense to me, but a lot of people are believing it. A lot of people are cremating their dead now, or finding other ways to dispose of earthly remains, without burying people in graves. But there are other people who, I dunno, do it out of spite or something. Like they want to prove they're not afraid of anything. They insist on being put in a coffin after they die, they won't have it any other way. It's all crazy. I don't know much about it all.
But you know what I do know? I do know I lost my best friend Joe to those goddamn zombies yesterday. I knew we shouldn't've walked past that graveyard yesterday, around sunset. That's when the zombies come out, y'see. It's like they know when the sun goes down, and it draws them out of the ground. We'd gone out for afternoon drinks, me and Joe and his brother Tim, and we lost track of the time, and we ended up walking past that graveyard at sunset. And when we heard all that groaning and saw bodies sprouting out of the ground like some kind of hell spawn, well we knew we'd bought it. But we weren't going to just surrender, no way. We picked up whatever we could find, I remember grabbing a stick, and I think Tim had a big rock, and we fought those zombies. We fought them hard. We smashed and hit and punched and kicked, and knocked so many of them down. They kept getting back up, but we kept fighting.
We were actually doing okay, you know? We were watching each other's backs - we're good at that, comes from the three of us fighting in the same platoon together, during the war - when suddenly a zombie sprouted from the grave right beneath my feet. I got knocked over, flat on my back, and watched the zombie pull herself - it was a girl, see - right out of the ground, bits of her skin falling down everywhere. And I coulda kicked her, or hit her with my stick, or heck I could've at least rolled away, but I couldn't. I was completely dumbfounded, stunned stupid.
See, even in a her state of decay, I could tell who she was. It was my old girlfriend, Emma. We'd been together a long time, before the war'd even started. I spent two years overseas, hiding in foxholes and digging ditches. I saw so many guys lose their girlfriends, getting those letters that sounded so sweet at first but always ended with "But I think we should see other people" or bullcrap like that. Emma never did anything like that. When Emma wrote to me, she always ended her letters with "And I'll love you 'til the day I go to my grave."
Well, she did, but I didn't. See, war changes you. I came back a different man from when I set out, and in the end it was just too much. She was heartbroken when she found out I was leaving her. But I did anyway, I walked away from her, while she was fighting back tears and promising to wait until I'd come back to her. Except she never got the chance, six months after that she caught a bad case of pneumonia. She probably could've beat it, probably could've gotten better, but she just didn't have the will to go on any more. The doctors said she died of a broken heart. She'd kept her promise though. She loved me until the end, until the day she went to her grave.
I owed my Emma so much. So when I saw Emma climbing out of that grave, the last thing on my mind was hitting her. Hell, I had half a mind to let her take me back to her grave. I remember her shambling towards me, still lying flat on my ass, with her hands outstretched, her dead eyes fixed on me. I was ready for her, you know? I was ready to pay back everything I owed her.
And suddenly Joe just jumped in front of me, and she grabbed him instead. He tried to fight her, but he'd lost his weapon, and he was too tired from all the fighting. And I was still lying on my ass, and Tim was too far away to help, and we could only watch as Emma pulled Joe back towards her plot of land. My Emma, the girl I'd left so many years ago, was taking my best friend away from me. Maybe it was a kind of payback, I dunno, but it sure felt like hell watching Joe get dragged away by my ex-girlfriend, kicking and screaming and crying, begging for someone to help him.
And in the end, there was nothing I could do. I was completely stupid with horror and a bunch of other emotions. All I could do was yell, as Emma pulled Joe into her grave, "EX PULLIN' IN JOE!!"
