The Last Dead Man

The last dead man on Earth contemplates his life and his new friend.

He's an asshole. And for about an hour now, he's been banging that asshole head of his against the same damn wall, grunting with every hit, leaving a bloodied tooth and a part of his rancid cheek behind; the whole beautiful mess smeared in reddish, grayish, blackish mush with a little green for decoration. Disgusting.

At least the other ones shamble or growl, or do something when they’re not feeding, but of course I get to watch the "special" one who looks like a lagging video game character in the worst RPG ever. Secretly I'm hoping that he's trying to kill himself. He murdered like half my family, so he kind of deserves it. You know I watched him bite the face right off of my fiancée. Like one of those turkey legs at a Ren Faire, ripped it right off. I never wanted to double tap a bastard so badly in my life, and then he chows down on my parents and sister like it’s an All You Can Eat of My Family Buffet. 

I followed him afterwards because what the hell else was I supposed to do? Oh, I should mention that I'm dead too. But like Patrick Swayze Ghost dead, like Casper the friendly Ghost dead, like Ghost Dad dead. Well, maybe not that last one, but you get the picture. I have a body, or what looks like one, but I’m all that floaty, transparent nonsense. I can kind of touch things when I focus hard enough, but who the hell would want to touch anything in the alley next to the building I lived in? And, of course, my only buddy is this asshole who eats everything in its path. That's all these monsters do. 

They kill and eat until their stomachs literally explode, and they just kill and eat some more. And that's what made us all into Patrick Swayze. Those things that bang their senseless heads off of walls, and are so hungry that the entire planet couldn't fill them.

And my special gift in death is to watch them obliterate everything, while doing nothing about it. I actually don’t know if it’s just me. I’d rather not be the last narcissistic idiot on Earth, but I haven’t seen anyone else like me. I’ve seen my mom rip the neighbor family apart while they tried to escape in their hatchback. My little sister is really adept at take downs from above, and my fiancée just hasn’t been the same since she lost her face, but besides that (and that asshole who keeps moshing against a wall) I haven’t really noticed much else.

Wait a sec, what’s that across the street? What the hell? Something just moved like really fast, and nothing moves that fast unless it’s Sis hopping off a fire escape. It’s not any animal; they’ve been gone forever…No way. No way are they still alive. There are three of them: one guy, two chicks. They look like the poster children for post-apocalyptic fashion, covered with dirt and months old sweat stains. They’re staking out something, laying low.

They’re kind of stupid to be in the city to begin with; don’t they read? These undead jerk-offs are everywhere, and they haven’t really eaten in a while. I don’t think they have like an actual appetite or anything. After all the living were gone, most were just content with rotting until they couldn’t actually move anymore, but the second they sense that something is alive, they’ll go after it, and three against about a million isn’t the best kind of odds. I think they just need supplies though. Everything has got to be short nowadays, and my family lived above a pharmacy. 

You know, I’m actually kind of happy I went early. I’ve read and watched hundreds of ways about how our world was going to end, and the survivors just seemed like the plucky kind of go-getters that I never really was. You need to be a special kind of person to survive, and I don’t think it’s something you can learn. It’s just an instinctual “survival of the fittest” situation where you either get the meat, or be the meat. And if you’re an undead jerk-off, well, I guess you’re a little of both.

Oh shit, they’ve been spotted by my “special” man. He stopped whack-a-moleing his brains because one of the chicks was stupid enough not to watch where she was going, and kicked a tin can. Oh here comes Mom, ready to rumble, and the fiancée just scared the shit out of the dude with her whole “missing face” situation. Oop, and Sis got the other chick right from the fifth floor fire escape. She’s getting even better at her take downs because she’s not as clumsy like the rest. I’d be proud of her, but I’m pretty sure I’d go to hell for thinking that, and I’m in kind of sensitive situation at the moment.

The noisy chick is panicking, of course. Mom and Fiancée already got the pants shitting dude after finishing off the other girl, so now it’s just her and the Asshole, staring each other down like they were in a bad Spaghetti Western. She’s watching my family out of her peripheral as they chew away at her companions, while watching him move slowly towards her, not in much of a hurry. He’s such an idiot, he’s not even growling like Sis or Mom. He just grunts away with each step, ooze dripping down his slack jawed face.

This chick didn’t really prepare for a worst case scenario, and I highly doubt she was the leader of her pack. She can’t steady herself, at all. She has one little pistol pointed at the Asshole’s head, but she’s shaking like a leaf, way off center. I’d like think of myself as a nice guy even though I’m pretty sure I’m stuck in purgatory for eternity, so I take pity on this girl. She’s just trying to survive in a literal dog-eat-dog world, and I don’t think she’s as plucky as she needs to be. So I walk up behind her, focus all of my attention on her body, and I push. She dives head long right into the Asshole’s arms, and he goes for her face. He’s got a thing for faces.
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Now, don’t get me wrong; I know what he is and all, but what the hell. He might be an incompetent, undead asshole, but he was my body. I got to help myself out sometimes, you know? 

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Photo courtesy of Louis from Pexels