At risk of sounding repetitive, I feel it necessary to inform you all of another zombie encounter I had. Now, I would have ideally already written a detailed account (with accompanying photos) of the “Zombie Hospital” in St. Andrews, but I was so terrified of the place while I lived there that I couldn’t bring myself to take any photos for fear of the likelihood of having my precious flesh devoured. And you all know how much I like my flesh.
To be honest, this place scared me so, so much that it was all I could do to walk past it every day on my way to work, or class, or town, etc. And coming back at night… well, that is where this tale begins.
At night, the Zombie Hospital (or Memorial Hospital, as is its official name) is entirely frightening. Usually passing by gave me a kind of delicious shiver – even in the daytime – but when it was a foggy night (as happened occasionally), I actually lost any sense of reason. One such night I was walking home from a friends. As I approached the Zombie Hospital, I couldn’t help but start to think of horror movies and the great use that they would make of my situation:
Zombie Hospital (Not actual name/not actual building)
***
A single young woman walking down an empty, silent, fog-enshrouded street. To her left, an old stone wall with an archway barred by an imposing looking iron gate; beyond which are the grounds of a school (and children are only slightly less terrifying than zombies), with gnarled tree branches reaching out of a dense mist (which must naturally obscure the presence of a hoarde of zombie children). To her right, a building which is so desperately creepy that it must provide a base for the experimentation of reviving the flesh of the dead.
Eerie music plays… from behind her a humanoid shadowy figure emerges, its shuffling gait echoing against the stone wall… She turns, sees it, runs… but there is no escape.
***
The reality was not so different. In front of me I heard footsteps. But they were not the strong, confident footsteps of a healthy young student. Nor were they the heavy, uneven footsteps of a loopy inebriated partygoer. It was a decided shuffle…
Out of the fog, a bent and deformed figure began to emerge.
And I knew – I just knew what I was facing. All reason had left me, and I was left with nothing but paralysing fear and the all-consuming knowledge that I was moments away from a zombie confrontation from which I was undoubtedly not going to survive. I had two options:
1) Run. Just fucking run. Fucking, run! But which way? Back to town? But there is never just one zombie, and city centres are not the best place to go during the zombie apocalypse. Home, to hide? Home was past this zombie, but it was one lone zombie! Could I outwit it? Sneak past?
Can you tell which is which?
2) Stay still. A spark of reason crept in my fear-addled brain: what if this wasn’t a zombie? I’d certainly make an ass of myself running to town screaming, or else possibly terrify some poor sod innocently walking home… on a broken foot or something.
Fortunately for me, I was, as I already mentioned, paralysed with fear. I couldn’t move, and so I didn’t move, and the figure – which turned out to be an old woman – walked past me with little or no attempt to eat my kneecaps.
BUT the moral of this story is that you can never be sure whether someone is an old person or a zombie. And I should know. I grew up in a town in Canada which has an average age of 71 (this may be slightly exaggerated), due largely in part to its many, many retirement villas, old folks homes, and assisted living centres – including one of the (if not the) largest in Canada. Living in this town was, about 47% of the time, no different from a scene in Dawn of the Dead.
And so my advice of the day is, watch the Elderly closely. One day soon they will be infiltrated by zombies and if you aren’t careful it could escape your notice, and the zombie apocalypse would be a success before anyone even knew it had taken place. Remember, the difference in their eyes…
Or is it?
ally. you are SO effing hilarious. i laughed outloud. many times.
and yes, old people are horrible horrible things.
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