Johnny America

 

Af­ter the Zom­bies Came: Day 8

by

Vig­go had holed up in his par­ents’ base­ment since news of ris­ing corpses first scrolled across the bot­tom of his tele­vi­sion screen. He’d bolt­ed up from his yel­low bean­bag chair and run up­stairs to his par­ents’ room, root­ing out the shot­gun and shells from the walk-in clos­et. He’d tossed cans and dry goods down the stairs to his base­ment bach­e­lor pad to avoid wast­ing time, so im­pend­ing the zom­bie threat. He’d bolt­ed the base­ment door, screwed it tight with ply­wood block­ing, then wait­ed with the shot­gun rest­ing on the back of an old bent­wood chair like a ma­chine gun perched on a tripod.

For a day Vig­go sat vig­i­lant, an­tic­i­pat­ing foot­falls above and the slow creak of wood­en joists as the zom­bie horde de­stroyed the rooms above him. He imag­ined their avante-garde pound­ing at the base­ment door hun­gry for the taste of brains. For a day he smoked cig­a­rettes and wait­ed, but the zom­bies did not come.

On the sec­ond day Vig­go re­turned to his bean­bag chair and watched the news cov­er­age but he soon grew bored of car­nage shot with tele­pho­to lens. He slid his palm over an elec­tro­mag­net­ic switch, ac­ti­vat­ing the sleek video game sys­tem, and fought elec­tron­ic zom­bies. He soon grew bored of sim­u­lat­ed car­nage so he loaded an­oth­er disc in­to the con­sole. A se­ries of hands sign­ing the in­ter­na­tion­al ges­tures for ‘rock,’ ‘pa­per,’ and ‘scis­sors’ spi­raled across the tele­vi­sion, then a line­up of biki­ni-clad Japan­ese dis­solved on­to the pix­els, form­ing a high-de­f­i­n­i­tion menu of op­po­nents. Vig­go picked the third girl from the left, the one with pig­tails, Saisho wa Guu!, they chant­ed in syn­chro­niza­tion. She took her top off when his scis­sors sliced her pa­per. The sim­u­lacrum licked her own nip­ple when he threw pa­per to the video game’s rock.

Vig­go fell asleep in his yel­low bean­bag chair, the shot­gun a few steps from his hands.

Filed under Zombies, of or Relating to on November 23rd, 2007

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