The geriatric zombie

Ethel Cormac was eighty-two years, five months, one week and three days old the day that she became infected. As always with these things, no one really knew how and why it all began. Why Ethel? Why now? Important, but difficult questions where being tossed around, but there were no answers. There never is.

The infection spread under the radar and for the first couple of days, nobody noticed anything. The old folks had always been slow, drooling and talking nonsense. Why would the nurses at the old folks home react with suspicion when their patients stopped asking for fruit jell-O and starting begging for brains instead? A couple of weeks earlier, an old man named Marv had started a riot amongst the elderly because he was convinced that an evil elephant lived in the basement. The nurses responded to the brain cravings as they did when the elephant alert was signaled – they ignored it.

My next door neighbor was a nurse at that home. They tied her to the living-room table and ate her entire head. It was in the local paper the next morning. The first time anyone noticed the effect of the virus for real.

After that, panic spread. No one knew who was safe and who wasn’t. After all, it was only the elderly that became infected. The rest of us just died from having our brains eaten or managed to hide. The politicians called it MGD, Mad Geriatric Decease. But we, the younger population, we knew exactly what they were. They were zombies.

Even though the geriatric zombie wasn’t very fast or particularly clever, it wasn’t safe for the younger crowd to be alone, so everyone moved into group homes. Kind of funny if you think about it. The zombies escaped from their homes to find delicious brains, and we were forced to live in similar homes as a result. Go figure.

After two weeks, every person over the age of sixty was a walking corpse. Parents, grandparents and friends who just happened to be a little too close to that age line were locked up, just to be safe. I witnessed my childhood friend Sarah club her own mother in the back of the head with a bat and drag her into the garage. I thanked my lucky stars that all my relatives lived miles away.

I shacked up with six other people in their twenties. We found a huge, abandoned apartment high up in a building in the middle of town. I guess that was why the seven of us ended up together. We didn’t want to run from this curse. We wanted to stop it. That’s why a setup smack down in the middle of zombie central was perfect. But we had to lay low. One false move and our hide-out would be discovered, making us all treats for the elderly.

The funny thing about the whole incident, if you can find humor in such an event, was that it was all over in just four and a half weeks. The infection never spread outside our little city. The rest of the world was safe. And it was our group of seven who finally put an end to the madness. We found the cure. Or actually, we found a solution.

The idea sprung from my mind at a moment when we all were sure that we were done for. We had left our hide-out for just an hour to gather more supplies when we were discovered in a convenience store by the brain-eaters. All of a sudden, there they were, by the dozen. Looking gloomy and staring at us through vitreous eyes. None of us moved or dared breathe for almost a minute. We were completely surrounded and there were too many of them to get rid of by using our weapons, which mainly consisted of bats, knifes, frying pans and other stuff that could be smacked hard against someone’s skull.

That was the moment when I noticed something. None of us were screaming. We were all frozen with fear. Not hiding, not running away and not defending ourselves. Just standing there. And so did the zombies. They were looking at us and we were looking back, as if both sides were waiting for the other to make the first move.

I told the others to stay still and be quiet as I slowly moved towards the zombie closest to me. It was a woman. She had a pink apron on, her mouth was open and her head slightly tilted to the side. I was almost within her reach and could hear the others breathe behind me. I smiled at her and said hi. Very slowly, her entire face was shaped into a gigantic smile that spread to the other zombies.

My fellow youngsters were astounded.

It just so happened that there was one thing the zombies wanted more than brains, and that was some attention. The only thing an old man or woman in a nursing home really wants from the beginning. Somebody to talk to. Not to be ignored by the nurses who work there. Or to be forgotten by one’s family yet again.

The irony of it all.