My name was John Folger, and no, no relation to the coffee. That’s always the first thing people ask when I meet them, and my response is automatic. It’s possible that by now there isn’t even an empty can of Folgers left, so maybe that reference doesn’t make any sense to you, but all I know about is the past and the right now. I guess my writing this down shows that I still believe in a future, but I have no more illusions that I’ll be in it. I hope my story can help you, even if it’s just to fill in the blanks of a moment in history. I warn you, I have no answers, only observations and a few confessions.

I am thirty-four, I’m not married, no kids that I know about, and I may just be the last person left. So I’ll just go ahead and start from the beginning. I don’t know if I’ll get to finish, and if I don’t, I apologize; I’m not trying to be all mysterious, but I have to tell this right, and there’s not much light left and I’m definitely not going to shine my flashlight while I’m just sitting here, so I can be some kind of easy target.

At first, when the wave hit, and there were an impossible number of attacks reported, I thought, well hell, it’s got to be Al Qaida and his posse, or some wacked-out Moonie cult, or a dipshit coward like Timothy McVeigh – you know, someone or some group looking for atenti0on. I definitely didn’t believe it when people started saying, “they’re dead.” I mean, I’m into some chat groups and whatnot, there are blogs I read, and no one could believe it. It was way easier to think government conspiracy, cover-up for some drug trial gone bad or something, but the idea that dead didn’t mean dead anymore, that was way too fucking much.

I did believe when I saw them coming for me. It was about a week after the rumors had started on the net. Some people were evacuating the city – I don’t know where the fuck they think they were going, but in my apartment building, most of the residents stayed behind. I didn’t know too many of my neighbors, except by sight, but I felt better knowing there were people around. I’d fallen asleep after drinking a few beers, but I snapped to when I heard some truly terrifying sounds – screaming, raging, crying, shouting, and a moaning, this eerie almost human wail that sent chills spidering down both arms. When I opened my apartment door, I scanned the hallway and saw a couple of dudes lying on the ground. They had to have been dead – they were ripped up like a bear had mauled them. I couldn’t tell who they had been, but then one of them sat up. His eyes were gone, most of his nose, and his arm was ripped from the socket, but the fucker got up and started lurching toward me. I had a crazy moment where I thought, I’d better call 911, but then some more primitive level of my brain got my legs moving fast, and I ran to the stairwell. I didn’t know where the danger was coming from, but the sounds seemed to be coming from below, so I made it up to the three flights to the roof of the apartment building – good thing the undead cannot climb–and watched the mayhem in the courtyard. It kept on happening – people were getting attacked – partially eaten – falling down dead, only to reanimate and turn on whoever was still alive. Thank god there were no kids down there, just dudes like me, single, without anyone who really gave a shit about them. When there was no one left to attack, the pack started shambling away, probably looking for more meat. Everything went surreally silent, which scared me more than the awful noise of the carnage had. I couldn’t stop shaking, and I stayed on the roof the rest of the night, too freaked out to move. I must have dozed, because I woke up to the roar of an airplane overhead. It gave me stupid hope. But that was it. I guess the munchers had swept through the whole neighborhood because there were no signs of life anywhere. I finally went back down to my apartment, moving as quietly as I could, in case there were any of those monsters still inside, but it was as silent as the tomb. The dead dudes in the hallway were gone, the only signs they had been there the drying pools of blood, and the awful drag marks they’d made as they undied.

Back in my place, I loaded up my backpack quick with what-have-you – water, flashlight, batteries, water proof matches, protein bars – first it was my Y2K stash, then it was my homeland security stash, then my hurricane stash, and now it was my surviving the rise of the dead stash. The only additional items I added were the night vision binoculars and KA-BAR knife my dad had left me.

Why did I walk? I can hear you thinking that. Who walks out the apocalypse? Why didn’t I get in my truck, or some nice, abandoned Hummer? Thought about it, but then I felt it would be more of a liability than an asset. I was aiming for being invisible, silent, not attracting attention to myself. Besides, what would I do for gas? What if it got stolen, or other survivors wanted a ride? I was not looking for company, did not want a hassle, or the responsibility of other people, and I figured, in a pinch, I could climb up a tree, or stay awhile on a roof somewhere, or maybe even walk right into one of those tent cities FEMA was supposedly setting up. And, if you want some real honesty – hell, why hold back now – I think I was kind of hoping that if I did get attacked, that it would be sooner rather than later. I’m not saying I had a death wish or anything, but what did I have? No wife, no kids, a shit job, friends with people only through the computer, no dog, no parents. Money? Yeah, right! For all I knew, I was the only survivor in the city. I have to say, and I know you might think less of me for it, but fuck it: when I realized the mail was finished, the ravaged banks empty, the ATMS ripped out and bashed open, businesses abandoned, electricity only intermittent, it hit me that I was kind of free for the first time. So say that I’m sick and twisted or selfish, but I don’t remember a time before this clusterfuck that I did not have a thing to worry about, other than surviving. No more of the bullshit that turns people into alcoholic, wife-beating, road-raging lunatics, or else uptight, ulcerated bald sacks of shit. No worries! Every goddamn inhalation another point for our side! I tell you, I was relieved.

That euphoria lasted two more days and then I woke up to a brutal fucking reality. It started with the flags on the highway. You know the ones I mean – the giant ones at car dealerships. So huge they move in slow, undulating waves in the wind. They float over us, larger than life, but somehow invisible. Well, I guess once you remove the cars, the people, the airplanes, and all the other noise of life, the flags start to stick out. So I’m walking along, no real destination in mind, and I see those huge flags and sonofabitch if I didn’t break down then and there. I know it’s strange – I’m no patriot. I grew up with a dad so fucked up from Vietnam it was like he never came home, and two older brothers with such hard ons for war they enlisted in Bush the elder’s fight in the Gulf. Not me. My standing plan was to hop on the next Greyhound for Canada if Uncle Sam ever came calling for me. I’m not a coward, or a peacenik. You ask me, war is stupid and pointless and inevitable. I just didn’t want to die or end up a shell like Dad. But there you go – the end of the world does strange shit to a person. I’m crying my ass off over Old Glory, even though I’d witnessed enough real-life horror to break even the hardest Spartan, and I’m front and center in a war between the living and the undead I definitely did not sign up for.

I sat on the goddamn freeway and cried. I didn’t give a shit anymore. It was all really gone, and no one was going to make it all better. I didn’t want to be alone anymore. Then it started raining like a bitch, and I crawled off the road and took cover under some trees. That’s when I saw her. Legs and hips was all that was left, but they used to be attached to a woman. A few yards from her, a kid’s teddy bear was on its back, the tan fur saturated in blood. My pity party stopped as abruptly as it had started and a rage boiled inside me like I had never known. This one guy I met in one of the chat rooms was always talking about serial killers, and how they were probably just really fucked up, misunderstood people with some kind of genetic flaw that made them have to kill. A lot of the other chatters would argue with him, saying how can you feel sorry for them, or why are you making excuses, and he would say why are we all so threatened by humanizing them? Why could we not see the tragedy that turned these people the wrong way out? I was never much of a participant; I would read what the others had to say, but I thought he had a point. Now, looking at what those undead fucks had done to this woman and her kid, all I could think was, there’s no shred of humanity in that. Only animals or freak natural disasters– nothing with feelings– could pull a woman apart and eat her guts. The rain stopped then and that’s when my life took on meaning for the first time, in that split second. I knew what I had to do. I had to fight this thing, or die trying. Picked up this notebook and pen from a nearly empty convenience store and decided to write all this shit down for you, the future, so you could understand what had to be done.

Day before yesterday, I found them. A nest. They were quiet, like they were in some kind of pause mode, waiting for the next meal opportunity. I don’t think I can adequately describe my fear– death by zombie bite is one of the most god awfulest ways to go there is. I read about Ebola turning people into blood sacs, I know the Plague was hell on earth, and I never did relish the idea of wasting away from cancer. But this slow, painful, horrifying demise is surely the work of the devil. Someone who hates mankind had to have come up with this one. First the bite, which hurts like a really vicious dog bite, or a shark bite, then the instant necrotizing of the wound, the stink, the dripping pus, the blood, the weakening, the fever, the delirium, the shaking, the screaming, the pulling out of hair, the rolling backwards of the eyes, the desiccation of the skin and mouth and nose until the poor bastard is a shriveled hunk of drooling, oozing, putrid unhumanity. And what’s it take – anywhere from a few hours to a couple of days, according to what I had read online. Awful. Sometimes, depending on where the bite was, the person could be saved by a precise amputation. The only other cure was a pre-emptive bullet in the reassembling gray matter.

So when I found them, my plan was to take them out before they could get me. The KA-BAR is a little too short for comfort – hand-to-hand combat with a zombie was not something I was looking forward to– but I did find some rocks and pieces of metal pipe, and I was counting on the element of surprise. It didn’t turn out as I had planned. The biggest, ugliest of the fuckers came at me, mouth hole gaping, and I swung at it with a pipe, connected with the side of its head, but it didn’t drop. It did, however, take a chunk out of my wrist. I dropped the pipe and started running – got to the nearest building; I think it used to be a gas station – and hauled ass onto the roof. I could see them from where I was, and I thought they would follow me, but instead, the big ass zombie was lying on the ground, not moving, and the others – four of them – were sort of shuffling around like they didn’t know what to do next. Eventually, they just moved along and left their guy there. I watched for a long time, and then I scrambled down to take a closer look. My first theory was an unseen savior had snipered his ass from some rooftop, but there was no bullet hole in the thing, and no one else in sight. Then I thought, maybe he was sick – funny thought, but how much do we know about these things anyway? I sat down nearby to think, and watched the wound on my hand and waited to die, but nothing happened. It hurt, but not too bad. I wondered if I could cut my own hand off to save my life, if it came to that. I ripped up my shirt and made a bandage to wrap around it and got busy burning the zombie corpse. Took longer than I thought. I slept. Woke up, still nothing. I couldn’t believe it. I should have been one of them by now. Started walking again just to be doing something that felt productive, and that’s when it hit me. I’m the omega. Zombies bite me, they die. Something about my blood, or my DNA, or my cells – hell if I know! I am no hero. I’m just going to do what has to be done – what anyone in my position would do.

I’m comfortable up on this roof. The air is cooler and the sun has set about an hour ago. It would be almost pleasant, if I could forget the world. I sharpened the shit out of the KA-BAR with a rock, and plotted my cuts strategically, avoiding the bigger arteries. Scared? Shitless. Painful? Yeah, it hurts, but I guess I got a lot of adrenaline going because I can take it. The bleeding is under control. It was easier for me to cut out hunks of flesh knowing it wasn’t to save my own sorry ass, but to save yours. I’m sure that sounds crazy, but I don’t care anymore. There are pieces of me scattered on the other side of the road; warm and bloody slabs of fresh meat, waiting for the ones who are coming. I got my night vision binoculars trained on the spot and I’m thinking about my old man – what would he say if he could see me now? Would he be proud? No way in hell could he have known I’d be using his old army gear in the fight of my life. They’re close; I can feel them. They smell the meat, or sense it however they do. They’re taking the bait. Eat me, you fucks!

I guess that’s it. I can rest now, tilt my binoculars up at the sky and watch the stars and the planets still doing their thing, as if this were another ordinary night down here. If I wake up tomorrow, I’ll spread some more love around. And I’ll keep doing it until every last bit of me is used up.