Cigarettes

Today, thus far, has been fairly inactive.

Zombies were few and far between in the stretch of highway I traveled today. It was a depressing sight. Cars wrecked into highway medians, semis crunched against guard rails, bright orange, licking flames pushing black smoke into the air, as if to reinforce the idea that this is the End of Times.

At first, as I drove my loyal old pick up around the deserted cars, I wondered why people had suddenly wrecked into things and ran from their cars when the infection hit. Then, as my truck neared empty and I zig-zagged between piles of bent up metal that used to be cars off an exit with a clear route to a desperately needed gas station, I realized what I should have known all along.

People had simply turned. While the population of Indianapolis drove to and from work, to meet friends and family for lunch, to go to appointments, this odd infection hit, turning them as they drove. The infection seems to make people into hungry but dumb animals, and this was no exception. All knowledge of driving cars, of common sense, left them as they turned, causing pile ups throughout the length of the road.

As I drove through the maze of cars, I realized this because although the crashes had killed most, some of the cars had the drivers intact. They were too dumb to know how to take off their seatbelt, but smart enough--or, at least, they had that animalistic instinct--to know that I was food. As I drove by, zombies that had once been mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers, watched me with their intense, reptilian glare. The pounding they did on the windows as I drove past, the only thing they knew how to do in an attempt to reach me, was insistent and pathetically scary. Because, as I attempted to ignore the pounding, the pounding of the windows until hands broke open and smeared red on the inside of the windows, only exciting the zombies more, I knew that they could not reach me, but it only reinforced the fact that I was alone.

I filled up at the gas station after that. I also stocked up on food and supplies, grabbing a baseball bat from the employee area for good measure, in case my guitar became useless in the future.

On the way out of the gas station, I was trembling simply because my mind was trying to force me to wake up, get out of this nightmare. Certainly, that's all this was. I could not seriously be alone in the middle of a zombie-induced Armaggedon. Childishly, I then pinched myself, as if that would help.

When it didn't, I grabbed cartons of cigarettes from back behind the gas station counter. I had never smoked before today; in fact, I found it quite a disgusting habit. I always prided myself for being completely poison-free--no cigarettes, drugs, alcohol, or even the consumption of meat back when things were normal. But today, I started smoking. Dying of cancer is a relief compared to being eaten alive. And hell, if it helps the stress, it's damn worth it.

I have no more beliefs to hang tight to. They don't matter anymore. I've been eating anything I can get my hands on, and today started a habit I used to condemn others for. As I sit here, by the last light of the sun shining coral through my truck's windshield, I realize that this apocolypse has taken my very being from me, stripping me from the things that made me an individual.

I must ask myself: is it even worth it to survive, when the only thing that makes me special on this earth is the fact that I am human?