The night is quiet as I twirl and dance among the abandoned
cars along the street. I whirl past a
dusty white station wagon with “In case of Rapture, this vehicle will be
unmanned” on the bumper and a half-eaten corpse in the driver’s seat. No Rapture, my dear sir. This is 100% apocalypse and 0% salvation, all
lingering whimpers and no mercifully decisive atomic bangs. I nod and wave at
the decaying driver as I leap onto the hood of the car and pirouette onto the
sidewalk. I’m almost to the museum now.
The lack of adequate cover for living humans has made
Central Park sparse pickings, so most of dead don’t hunt here any longer. I don’t
smell human anyway. I smell like petroleum and grease. I’ve held out for as long as I could, and
tonight I’m done. I’m not even going to
try to rage against the death of light anymore.
The moonlight reflects off the white façade of the
building. I am dancing in a spotlight,
but I’m not worried. The dead don’t
sneak up on people. They just stumble
along until you have nowhere to run from them.
They’re the turgid ebb and flow of human misery that Matthew Arnold
bewailed. I chuckle and tell myself I’m moving through Arnold’s land of dreams. At least the museum still glistens like a lost
paradise nestled in the shadows of the park.
Before the Plague, I would visit the museum and wish I could
be there alone, without the mindless shuffle of tourists and the ridiculous
groaning of school children who had no interest in Rembrandt’s use of shadow or
Monet’s deconstruction of light. The living had no art to them, and I resented
how they intruded on the art of the dead.
I suppose this is the world I wished for, but I don’t want to live in
it.
I gaze up at the broad steps that lead to the museum’s
entrance. Eventually I realize that I can’t bear to risk burning the art after
all. I settle in the middle of the silent steps that once bustled with mischievous
children and chattering adults. The end of
the world is not nearly the boon I thought it would be. As I light my match, I console myself with Sylvia
Plath’s manifesto: Dying is an art. I’m
going to do it so it feels like Hell.
This is my entry for the Zombie Apocalypse Flash Fiction Contest, a promotion to help support the publication of J. Whitworth Hazzard's excellent zombie collection, Dead Sea Games Series.
Like my story? Kickstart the zombie apocalypse by publishing Dead Sea
Games.
Want to write like
me? Personal
coaching and critiquing by Miranda Kate.
