The Zombie Apocalypse Light Show

I’ve been soaking my achy body in a hot bath for the last half hour. Jared had it ready for me when I finally got out of the car, which makes me feel guilty for snapping at him, but also grateful that he was so thoughtful. I hear a soft knock on the door.

“Come in, Jared.”

Jared opens the door of the bathroom.

“Hey Sue. I hope you’re feeling better.”

“I am. I’m sorry I snapped at you in the car.”

“I get why you did. Look, I don’t want to bother you, but there’s something strange happening outside.”

“Stranger than zombies?” I quizzically ask.

“It might be related to them. It might not be. So when you get a chance, can you come take a look?”

“Give me a few more moments and I’ll be down.”

Jared lets himself out. The water has become lukewarm, but for a moment I luxuriate in the feeling of it and then I push myself up with a grunt and start drying myself off. I know something is seriously bothering Jared when he doesn’t come up with a conspiracy theory or something else crazy to share with me. I quickly get dressed and head downstairs to the kitchen.

“Jared, where are you?”

“I’m out here, on the porch.”

I walk out to the porch and then I see what’s troubling Jared. There’s a lightshow going on across from our farm. There’s an eerie greenlight emanating into the sky and the source seems to be where we’ve dumped the bodies of the zombies.

“I wonder if the zombies are radioactive,” Jared mumbles.

“I’m kind of wondering that too,” I say. The last thing we need is for them to be radioactive. Maybe that’s how the zombie infection is spreading.

“We still have that Geiger counter, don’t we?” Jared asks.

“Yeah, it’s in the barn. I guess we should turn it on and see if it starts going klickity-klick.”

“If it does, we’re screwed,” Jared says and swallows awkwardly.

“Yes honey that could be the case, but let’s not jump to conclusions, just yet.”

Jared nods and then walks back inside the house. I wait a few moments, wondering what he’s doing. I’m about to call for him when he comes back out and flicks on a flashlight.

“So we can see in the barn,” he offers up as an explanation.

“Sure. Makes sense to me.”

We walk over to the barn I roughly remember where I put the Geiger counter. We got it a while back from Jared’s dad, in case we ever got nuked by the commies. That never happened, but we’d kept it anyway and up until today I never thought it would be of any use to us, but now I’m glad Jared insisted that we didn’t sell it at our last yard sale.

“I found it!” Jared says. He pulls it out of the tool shed. I know I didn’t put it there, so he must have relocated it there after the yard sale. I choose to let that go, since it might actually prove useful for once.

“Do you remember how to operate it?” I ask, instead.

“Yeah. Dad walked me through how to use it a couple times over. He always was a bit paranoid.”

I bite my tongue before I say that it takes one to know one. Jared got his conspiracy theory fetish from his dad, who’d come up with all kinds of wild plots about how the commies were trying to poison the minds of the school kids through the drinking fountains. That crazy stuff always made me roll my eyes.

Jared turns the Geiger counter on and it makes the usual clicking sound it makes when it detects the normal background radiation. So far so good.

“Let’s walk down a ways toward the green light to see what happens with the Geiger counter,” I suggest.

“Y-yeah,” Jared replies.

We cautiously walk down the drive way. I scan the fields as we walk, just in case there are zombies waiting for us, but the only thing which stirs the field is the wind ruffling the eaves of the grain. The Geiger counter continues to make a steady clicking noise as we walk closer to the green light.

“Are you sure that thing is working correctly?” I ask.

“Yeah it is, which is a relief to me. I’ve kept the instructions Dad gave me, and so far it’s working the way it would if the radiation is normal, which it appears it is.”

“Then what do you think is causing the green light?”

“I don’t know, but let’s get a bit closer and see if anything else happens.”

We walk to the edge of our property. The green light is practically bathing us in its emerald light, but the Geiger counter hasn’t gone wild with the clicking.

“On the positive side, we can rule out radiation,” Jared says, and turns the counter off.

“And the negative?”

“I have no idea what’s happening or causing that green light. I’m not sure I want to get any closer, to find out either.”

“What happened to your curiosity about what could be causing the zombie apocalypse?”

Jared flushes and says, “After the zombull, I don’t want to take anymore crazy risks.”

“I’m glad you’re seeing some sense about that, but in this case I think we should take a peek, just in case something is happening that we need to know about.”

Jared squirms for a moment and then sighs and nods his head. I’m kind of surprised with him. The green light must really be wigging him out.

We cross the street and walk up to the edge of the ditch. Jared directs the flashlight at our burial pit for the zombies, but we really don’t need it. The bodies are glowing with green light. It’s some kind of bioluminescence. None of the zombies stir, but it makes me wonder if they light up at night like this when they’re alive. We haven’t fought zombies at night, but if they light up like this it would make them easier targets.

“This is so weird,” Jared says.

“I agree, but other than them glowing it doesn’t look like anything else is happening. They’re still dead. I wonder why they’re glowing.”

Jared shakes his head and says, “I have no idea, but things just keep getting weirder and weirder. Let’s head back to the farm.”

“You know we should start keeping notes on the zombies. If we ever fight them at night, we’ll have to see if the live ones glow like the dead ones are.”

“Good idea, but some of these zombies have been dead for a few days. They didn’t start glowing until now. I’m wondering why it took so long,” Jared says.

“That’s a good point. Maybe there’s some kind of breakdown of something in them that’s causing them to glow.”

We walk back to the farm. I turn around once to look back in the direction of the green light. It just continues to glow, lighting up the area, but nothing else is happening. It’s another mystery we aren’t going to solve, but it makes me wonder about whoever came up with the zombie apocalypse, because it’s clear to me that whatever is happening has been manufactured by a human.

Jared takes the Geiger counter back into the barn, to put it away. I guess it had a use afterall, even if it was just to tell us that the zombies aren’t irradiated. Another note to put down in my journal. I walk into the house, grab a blank journal and start writing down all my observations about the zombies. Jared comes in a few minutes later and I give him a journal so he can get started too.

“I didn’t think you were serious about the journal.”

“I’m very serious. Start writing down your observation. If nothing else, it’ll give us a way to record something about this crazy experience we’re going through.”

“But you said we’re probably the last people left alive. What’s the point?”

“I was being cynical Jared. There’s probably other people alive out there, and even though I snapped at you earlier, you’ve got a point that we need to figure out what’s causing this zombie apocalypse. I’m sure your Dad would say it’s the commies, but I think we can agree it’s probably not them.”

Jared chuckles and says, “Yeah I don’t think it’s the commies, but it would be good to figure out that’s causing the zombie apocalypse.”

He awkwardly pats my left hand with his right hand, and I briefly grab hold of his right hand and squeeze it. We smile at each other. We’re going to survive this zombie apocalypse together, somehow.

To be continued...

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