Things have been pretty quiet on the zombie front these last months. No plagues or potential cover-ups, with the exception, of course, of the political zombieism which seems to have unfortunately spread to my own beloved Canada (more on that to follow later). Until today.
Now, I will admit that I was walking in to my office a bit later than usual today, but it seemed to me to be a bit unnaturally dead around town. Cafes – usually quite crowded – were sparsely populated; the hordes of students that usually mill about campus and the surrounding areas seemed by a trickle. Yes, it’s true that classes are over, but there are still exams to be had, and in my experience that usually means more students out en masse. It’s also relatively warm out today- granted, not as sunny as it was last week, but 11 degrees in Edinburgh is nothing to sneeze at, and yet the Meadows – usually packed with students playing football, people walking their dogs, frisbees winging about all willy-nilly – was nearly empty. It’s all very suspicious.
And then there are the sirens. In a 25 minute walk, I counted six emergency services vehicles that sped past me, sirens a-blarin’, lights all a-flashin’. It’s not atypical to see one, even two, on an average walk, but six? And even now I can hear two more passing by the campus.
It all lead up to an unnerving sense that something huge was going on beneath my very nose, but what? Of course it could be a major fire (please not my flat), or car crash, or a massive protest that has been going on in secret today, but my mind immediately leapt to the only rational conclusion: zombies.
If I irrationally fear it, it must be so.
I tried to remain calm. Hyper-vigilant, yes, but also calm. The worst thing to do in a potential zombie apocalypse is to cause a panic which could attract the rotting villains, and prevent you from slipping away unnoticed to your well-stocked fortress of a flat (provided it hasn’t burned down in the massive fire you conjured up in your mind to explain away the symptoms of a zombie apocalypse).
And then: incontrovertible proof. I, myself, came face-to-face with the living dead. Or a drunk. But I think we would all agree that, logically, he was most likely the living dead. His skin was dirty, his hair matted. He shuffled unsteadily towards me – the eyes with which he fixed a blank stare upon me were blood red – a horror to behold.
As I came within feet of him I froze in terror. He, too, stopped, staring at me and swaying. The door to the building which houses my office – and the limited security it provides – was directly behind him. I had once before been faced with this dilemma: to attack, and risk assault charges should I be proven wrong in my assumption that this man was a reanimated corpse (unlikely); to run, and hope that I could find some refuge nearby in which to hide; or to act naturally, and thus submit myself to a potential savaging at the hands of this skin-eating monster simply to project a facade of ignorance and normality? The world might see him as a homeless man, or a rather shabby drunk, but I knew what he really was. And so the question became whether he would attack, or whether I would, or whether we would both pass by, he pretending he did not want to devour my pancreas and I pretending I was not a moment away from decapitating him with a shovel.
This time we each allowed the other to live, but if it has started in Edinburgh – and I truly fear it may have – how long before the bloodshed breaks out into the streets and the world awakes to discover a zombie slobbering away on their tibia? The time has come – only constant vigilance and chainsaws can save us now.
