by Will Moran

Artwork by Alexa Gaffaney

“We need to slow down!” I wheezed.

Rachel and I had been running for hours and the zombies were still unrelenting in their pursuit.

“We can’t stop now because we have to find food and water and shelter and weapons and currently we have none of those things!” yelled Rachel.

Why did I do leg day yesterday? I couldn’t run faster even if I wanted to.

“If we could please just stop, just for a second, at that abandoned Motel 6, with its soft beds and warm showers, for just a second…”

The zombie apocalypse, having only started this morning, produced dozens of the fresh dead, hungry for as much living flesh as possible and ready for any challenge that any survivor could throw at them, though with Rachel not having done much work outside of wedding planning and me having just done leg day yesterday, we were not proving to be a terribly hard trial for the mass that was upon us. Searing, like a steak on the grill being cooked with spicy chili peppers under a lightning hot flame, and clenching, like a group of angry fists raised in turmoil, my leg muscles anguished with each step I took.

“We’re almost to the safe zone and the dead are right behind us; you and your big, muscular, gym-rat body are not tired!”

I could feel nothing but pain and suffering coursing through my veins, I could see nothing but soulless and hungry bodies surrounding me, and I could think of nothing but giving up and feeling relief in my lower limbs. My whole life I had worked towards a perfect body, yet here I was, barely able to run, feeling like my quadriceps had shrunk and subsequently caught fire in the drier.

And then that was when I felt it—the Charley horse chewing on my calf like a piece of bubblegum and forcing it into an impossible backflip that consumed me in torment; actually, that was a zombie, taking a bite out of my leg and pulling me down into the horde as I screamed with all the energy I had left: “Damn you leg day…”