Johnny seemed in his element in the homogeneous crowd of laborer, averaging 40 years old, jam-packed in a metal cylinder travelling underground. Most had empty expressions and crowning baldness accurately representing their boring personalities. No one even seemed to notice the persistent smell of urine or the gray haired woman near the front of the car who kept talking to herself about how there were “no other solutions, it was ineluctable, inescapable”. Johnny was at the other end of the car his back resting against the wall. He was in his usual state, painfully bored and fighting to stay awake, when he stumbled, startled by something hitting his chin. Accidentally leaning on his neighbor, a short morbidly obese man who replied with a disdainful stare. Returning to his initial position, he quickly understood his jaw just collided with his own chest. He fell asleep for a few seconds and stopped supporting his head (which actually happens a few times a week). The woman who had been speaking louder and louder for a few minutes suddenly stopped. Her face, frozen in a twisted grimace, made her crooked yellow (almost orange) dentition visible. The air felt heavy and the woman breathing through her clenched teeth seemed like the only audible sound for a moment. As if the calm announced the storm, a horrifying scream coming from the preceding car made everyone look towards Johnny. Almost immediately after, a detonating noise resonated so loud the now adrenaline flooded man felt like his eardrums had been perforated. The crowd was thrown forward as if the whole subway had came to an instantaneous stop.
The air, filled with dust and smoke, scorched his lungs and a loud ringing was resonating in his ears when he regained consciousness. (Assess the situation… mouth filled with blood and teeth, swollen nose, probably broken. Dried blood, I’ve been like this for a while. Why haven’t the emergency services reached us yet? Arms and legs seem fine… what the hell is pressed against my face?) He started moving his head and quickly realized his jaw was embedded in something… something squishy. (Oh god… it’s the head of the man from earlier. I fell on him for the second time today.) This time he broke his nose against the man’s cranium and his jaw apparently went in his eye socket causing a zygomatic fracture on the way. Johnny’s lower incisors broke on the upper edge of the rim of the man’s eye on the way in. (Lucky for me, his fat probably softened the impact.) His facial muscles tried to make him smile which caused an intense pain. (What the hell is wrong with me? This isn’t funny!) He couldn’t stop a scream from escaping his mouth as he pulled his chin out of the corpse’s head. A weird growling-like sound came from the car where the scream originated before the accident. Carefully approaching the source of the sound, he was able to distinguish a moving shape on the other side of the bodies piled against the door which lead to the other car. What seemed to be a young woman was eating the face of an old man, dead on the floor. Suddenly dizzy he accidentally took a few steps back, knocking glass around. Alerted, the creature was now digging a way in the pile of cadavers separating her from Johnny emitting . In a panic he exited through a broken window and ran as quick as he could without looking back.
When he reached the surface, havoc was general. He wasn’t too far from his house and his first thought was to make sure his wife and kids were safe. (First find them, then make provisions and finally drive to the most isolated place possible until we can determine the gravity of the infection. For once the wasteful gas guzzling all terrain truck the father-in-law gave us might be useful.) Though completely out of breath, adrenaline allowed him to run for longer then he ever believed possible. The door was locked, which sparked hope in his frenetic mind. He climbed on the roof and the first window led to his five year old son’s room where he was reassured to see him waiting armed with a knife. When his son saw his father’s bloody face he didn’t share the same feeling. Horrified he got up and ran to the door. Johnny started trying to say he wasn’t dangerous but his broken teeth, painful jaw and slightly torn cheeks didn’t allow for a very convincing speech. Instead, screaming from the pain of having just reopened the wounds in the corners of his mouth scared the boy so much he turned around, pointed his knife at the door and opened it slowly. Slamming open almost immediately, it knocked the knife out of his hands and his big sister ran in and started biting his neck. First stunned by the violence of the scene unfolding in front of his eyes the father then screamed in an animalistic way as he broke the window, lacerating his arms. He grabbed a piece of glass without even noticing he was cutting his hand and in a swift movement stabbed his daughter’s temple with it. The house became almost silent as he fell to his knees to take his son in his arms. The only sound was the one of his youngest offspring slowly chocking on his own blood. Tears were abundantly flowing down his cheeks as he kissed him on the forehead for the last time. When the child stopped struggling the father turned to his daughter. He wanted to remove the piece of glass from her head and had to actually dig his finger in the wound to retrieve it. As he pulled it out, his son jumped on his back and started to bite his shoulder. Almost simultaneously, a scream came from behind him. In an instinctive movement he threw his son against the wall and turned around blindly slashing with the piece of glass. In front of him, his wife was holding her throat to keep the blood from flowing abundantly. She stared at him with imploring eyes which seemed to be asking “Why?” Stricken with the horror of the actions he just committed, Johnny fell to the ground. His son was attacking him again but he didn’t defend himself this time as if he had accepted his faith. As blood flowed, his vision became blurry and he was suddenly woken up by the subway stopping.
He sat in his small cubicle, still reviewing the details of the imaginary adventure of this morning. He started his tasks, trying not to think about the tiny depressing empty apartment which waited for him after his day of work. His apocalypse scenario wasn’t one of the happiest but it was definitely one of the most distracting. He could probably think about it all day, modifying details or even completely changing the story to avoid thinking about the utter insignificance of his everyday life. After all, it was the only way he found not to become completely… zombie!
