“I say we turn in for the night,” Otoha said. She had just gone and slipped into some comfy workwear.
“Agreed.”
Any other self-conscious teen ’round my age would have creamed at the mere thought of getting to pass the night in relatively close proximity to the fairer sex, but frankly, I wasn’t in the mood.
It’s been a long day, so cut me some slack!
I was pooped and in desperate need of some good, quality shut-eye, but the ever-looming threat of a potential zombie ambush kept me wide awake. How lovely.
“Looks like we’re in the clear.” Otoha was keeping tabs on the CCTV footage from a six-monitor setup tucked away in the corner of the staff room. A few of the cameras were situated outdoors, which wasn’t exactly ideal, but the indoor coverage was about as good as it was going to get.
“Make yourself comfortable anywhere but the couch—that one’s mine. You should find whatever you need to sleep in the store. Just be a dear and don’t accidentally set off any of the booby traps while you’re at it.”
“How many are there?”
“You might lose sleep over it, so I’ll keep it a secret.”
“Didn’t really feel like sleeping anyway.”
“You should. You’ll need to be rested for tomorrow.”
“What’s happening tomorrow?”
“You’ll see.” With that, she padded over to the couch with a cute little yawn and passed out on the spot.
You’d think that with all the zombie media she’s absorbed throughout the years, she’d know better than to doze off in the presence of a man who could’ve been broken beyond repair and seeking to take out all his pent-up frustrations on her in a terribly cruel and violent way. Who would hear her screams and come to the rescue if I actually were one of those men? Nobody, that’s who.
“You really need to get a better grasp of the human condition,” I muttered before turning my attention to the CCTV footage. The images flickered in and out at fixed intervals as the six monitors had to accommodate for dozens upon dozens of cameras. I happened upon one of Otoha’s fabled booby traps after an intense bout of staring.
A little sign read “DANGER: HIGH VOLTAGE, KEEP OUT.” Otoha had taken the time to write it out herself... How cute. The trap was about as basic as could be: a couple of batteries wired to a doorknob above a floor drenched with water.
Would an electric current even affect a zombie...? Oh, right, Galvani’s frog leg experiments showed that electric shocks could be used to mimic signals from the central nervous system. That means a good zap would stop the zombie dead in its tracks... Kind of like Mom, now that I think about it. Given that explosives and chemical weapons are off-limits for obvious reasons, this is about as lethal as it’ll get.
But the fun didn’t stop there.
“Good lord. How does she come up with this stuff?”
Chimes, trip wires, loosely stacked boxes... Otoha’s general approach seemed centered around stalling the zombies or sounding an alarm more than anything else. Still, the sheer variety was genuinely mind-boggling.
How the hell is her apocalypse model this detailed?! Her eccentricity really isn’t doing her any favors. If she just did away with the weird parts of her personality, simps would be flocking to her like flies swarming hot dung.
Although, to be fair, I wouldn’t be where I am right now if not for her quirkiness. I’d probably be dead, watching the zombie cop moan as he stuffs his face with my juicy spleen, just like everyone else.
Imagine going about your daily life without a single care in the world, believing that even if the world does come to an end one day, you won’t be around long enough to experience it firsthand... only to look outside the window after finishing off the most delicious cup of tea and see one of your neighbors chowing down on your other neighbor in plain sight.
That would be enough to drive anyone mad—or, at the very least, cause them to teeter too close for comfort on the brink of insanity. Otoha seems like she’s really enjoying herself, but I’m always fighting off the urge to retreat into the deepest recesses of my mind and pretend none of this ever happened.
For all I know, I might just be a deranged lunatic, throwing myself against the padded walls of my cell while everyone else blissfully goes about their day.
My mom, my dad, my little brother—they’re all out there making the most out of life. They might have their disagreements, but in the end, they’ll always be there for one another. I get to enjoy a life of solitude, and they get to enjoy life without a deadbeat son. It’s a win-win. What’s not to like?
“Oh, who am I kidding...” I was getting teary-eyed, and my nose had started to run.
As much as I tried tricking myself into believing I was better off without my family weighing me down, and that their deaths meant absolutely nothing to me, deep down inside I knew I’d go back to my previous life in a heartbeat if I could.
“This is what I get.”
I hated my family, I hated society, and I hated everyone in it. For so long, I had wished they would all die and leave me be.
You got what you wished for. Hope you’re happy.
“Sorry ’bout that, high school girl I never got the pleasure of meeting.”
Or maybe I had met her. Never cared much for any of my classmates, to be honest. Their bullying didn’t make my life any easier.
Thankfully, it never got physical, but they had always openly laughed and made fun of me, as though they expected me to sit there and take it like a good little boy. The teacher knew all about what was going on but didn’t bother to intervene.
They called me all sorts of names, ranging from base level stuff like “weirdo” and “loser” to “school shooter in the making” whenever they felt like adding a touch of pizzazz to their usual lineup. Allegedly, this was all in the name of toughening me up.
No one’s a villain in their own story, I suppose.
There was no deeper reason behind it, though; my class had needed a target they could safely point their fingers at, preferably someone who was different from the rest. I just happened to be their scapegoat. No more, no less.
How ironic is it that their blind adherence to this flimsy concept of “normal” is what allowed the zombie outbreak to spread as effectively as it did?
It’s almost as if my darkest desires were granted by some higher power with a twisted sense of humor. Maybe if I’d kept those desires to myself, this could’ve all been avoided. Then again, hindsight is 20/20. Those people are dead and it’s all my fault. I killed the—
“Here.” Otoha suddenly pulled out a bulky biker helmet from underneath her couch and handed it to me.
“What for?”
“It muffles sound,” she said, staring into my eyes.
“Uh, thanks?”
She nodded and then went right back to sleep.
What did she mean by that? Oh, of course, it’s to deter zombies.
But where did she learn that from? Otoha doesn’t strike me as a biker chick, nor did I see a bike parked next to the police station. She went there with the express purpose of scavenging, and it would’ve been way easier to load up her spoils on a bike than carry them all the way back on foot. Plus, zooming past the zombies would’ve been a breeze.
Actually, lemme think about this for a moment. Why was there a helmet stashed under her couch, of all places? Did she expect me to have a nervous breakdown? Highly unlikely.
But... what if she had a meltdown of her own, and it got so bad that she needed to put on a helmet to avoid attracting zombies?
What if that deadpan expression isn’t a sign of indifference, but rather a tangible representation of a broken individual who went through a range of emotions so extreme that it left behind nothing but a battered, hollow shell of her former self?
“I had you all wrong,” I whispered.
Without realizing it, I’d been engaging in the same exact line of thought that had led to my own bullying.
What’s normal and what’s not is relative. Why should I, or anyone else for that matter, get to judge her by some arbitrary set of standards? Eccentricity shouldn’t be rejected. If anything, it should be celebrated. I’m living proof that someone’s oddities can do the world some good.
“Owe you one,” I said and popped on the helmet.
The world around me now felt distant, as though I had plunged into an endless void, never to return. It was strangely comforting.
It must’ve been hard sharing this little piece of your world with me, but rest assured, it’s in good hands.
I curled up in the corner of the room and remained motionless as my consciousness slowly drifted away.