What They Don't Tell You About The Apocalypse

A high school senior who dreams of having a career in writing <3

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People think that living during the zombie apocalypse is hell. It’s really not.

Being dead is so much worse.

I've been walking for weeks now. I feel the stinging in my feet yet my body trudges on in defiance of my brain. That’s what nobody expected when it broke out. That you’d see it all, feel it all. It was as if your body was on some twisted zombie autopilot, fueled only by hunger as you watch in horror, unable to do a damn thing to stop it. The thing is you don’t know about it until you die. Beforehand you think they're monsters with no conscience of the person before left in them.

God I wish it was that way.

When I was alive I never felt pity for these creatures, only fear and hatred. But now? As I tear into an elderly couple, chanting apologies again and again in my head like a broken record, I think that God is playing some sick joke. To have the living kill these things and fight for their lives, only to eventually become one of them; forced to watch as their own hands take the lives of others and feed on their corpses.

Now I feel no hatred for the monsters around me, only pity. I see their sadness hidden behind yellowed eyes. I see the remorse in the marine as he attacks a nearby camp, I see the fear in the teenagers face as he shuffles along all by himself, no sign of his family living or dead among him, I see the tears welling in the eyes of a father as he sinks his teeth into his daughter’s stomach. In their last moments I see the relief flood their face; joy shining in their eyes as a human puts a bullet in their head and their body stills for the last time.

I pray to God one day I’ll find that. That one day a group will see me shuffling and snarling at them and they’ll take my head off, ridding me of my diseased body and finally moving on. Maybe to heaven, maybe to hell, or maybe to nothing but eternal darkness. Anything is better than this.

But for now I march on alone, hoping to one day feel the forgiving hands of death and not come back to life.
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