By Kaiser Caesar

My life is a twenty-year nightmare that I still haven't woken from. Sucks, doesn't it? It's been so long since the good 'ol days, and yet I can remember them so clearly. Remember shit like Twitter? Remember shit pop music on the radio and Hollywood on the big screen? Peel back the hardened layers far back enough, and everyone who was alive to witness that era of "There's no Team in I" will. All the narcissism, greediness, the attention whoring, a slice of the way things used to be preserved perfectly in what the old world left behind like a mosquito in amber sap. How little we had to worry about, and how ludicrous the things we worried about were.

And I can't help but feel like crying whenever I think about who I used to be. Part of that crowd… the rising stars that could only go higher while climbing to the top of the world on the bones of everyone else. The celebrities. Our every breath and step immortalized by the tabloid press. Personal body guards, private jets that could take us anywhere we wanted to go. The only worries we ever had were fat and being caught in the act of a DUI. We were on the top of the world. The spoiled shits who cynics always brought up when wondering why cops and others who actually helped the community were paid less but no one but them gave a rat's about it. We were immortal, we would be forever young, and no one could stop us. A life we jubilantly rode at maximum overdrive, until everything went too fast even for us the last months of 2013. When everything came crashing down.

The new world quickly rewrote the rulebook. I suppose that other than the politicians, no group of people were hit harder than us. In the course of one night, we were thrust into a world that no longer needed us. No more VIP treatment. Suddenly all the money and fame we had no longer meant jack. All our private planes and limos confiscated by the government for their fuel, our houses on Sunset Boulevard ransacked, and the spotlights taken off of us at last. It no longer mattered who got who pregnant or who got caught doing Mexican Mud in the bathroom of this week's hottest nightclub. It no longer mattered whose voice sounded good in autotune, who wrote what, or who won the award for Best Picture. All that mattered was who could hold a gun or hoard enough to survive. All the songs, the books, and the scripts simply up and went to hell.

And that was when the world was still in shock after the first day. When it became clear that there was no miracle cure, that things would never be the way they were ever again, and that even the government that was supposed to be protecting us were leaving us behind… As the infection evolved and the lights in our collective hearts extinguished… that's when true hell broke out, taking all of us with it.

You know what's ironic? I had made my living starring in mainly action movies. You know the sort, one-liner quipping badasses who dressed up in colorful spandex or sleek tuxedos. And as each check from my latest box-office smashing hit poured into my mailbox, I got into the illusion. Thought that I was the badass who would always be fucking prepared for whatever came his way. But when the shit finally happened, that's nothing close to what really happened. When my co-star was having her neck torn out by the cameraman, when my limousine was rammed off by the road, and when all of LA county around me was in flames I learned an unfortunate truth. That I was no badass. That I was an A-list level coward and that was the only thing that kept me alive.

My parents were both actors. I spent a good chunk of my childhood alternating between the states and the UK. I suppose that I had a choice when it came to my adult profession, but it never felt like I did. I always supposed back then before Day One that I had been born into this life, that the silver screen was my destiny. I knew all the big names, and I had them on speed-dial. I was even engaged to one of them, and our period of engagement was one of the major headliners before the Pandemic cut it short.

I never found out what happened to any of them. My parents were both in London at the time of the outbreak, and there was only the sound of a dead line every time I tried to call before I finally gave up and accepted that I would never see them again. I never tried to find her either. I was too scared to make the search, and I accepted the fate of our love as the military quarantined LA. What hurts most nowadays, even with how desensitized we've all become, is remembering that once upon a time in a land far far away I had this life. But I can't even remember their faces or what their voices sounded like anymore.

I started this new life out on the West Coast, but eventually I drifted east with each year as society continued to decay. I was betrayed, I betrayed, I did whatever it took to survive. But I mostly ran. Like I said, I came to grips quickly that I wasn't a badass and that anyone who tried to be a badass like the ones they played onscreen were only going to get a nasty one-time taste of reality. When our own fellow survivors started turning on each other in addition to the walking horror that already menaced our lives, this only reinforced my cowardice. It wasn't easy to survive. The shame follows me wherever I drift next, and I don't even know what I'm surviving for now anymore. I'm never going to see my fiancée or anyone that I genuinely cared about in my vapid old world again. I'm never going to act in this lifetime again. And yet I keep going. I don't know why.

Currently, in the year Two Thousand Whatever since time stopped mattering long long ago, I find myself with a small circle of drifters like myself. They plan on drifting to the East Coast for whatever fucking reason. It's mostly out of circumstance for all of us. It's an odd sort of paradox. The world decreed long ago that it was every fucker for themselves, but you have better luck betting on your chances of seeing tomorrow by sticking around in a group. I don't think it will last. Twenty years of running have taught me that. Soon it'll either be me that deserts them or them that desert me, depending on how soon they find out how fucking useless I really am. I'm not sure I even know what their names are. I mean, why even bother getting attached to someone you know will probably die?

We're gathered around a campfire. By some lucky chance one of us managed to find a box of matches that were still good in the remains of a convenience store that hadn't been fully looted. It's the weakest fire I've ever seen, and I suppose that it's bound to flicker out by itself any moment now. In the early days, there'd be singing around campfires like this. But as the years went by and it became clear there was no rescue coming, the singing ceased. We just sit and stare, sometimes talking.

When we do talk, it's a varied nest of bees we kick. In the early days it was about why. Try to piece together why a strain of fungi was suddenly able to infect humans and turn them into monsters. Try to find an excuse for why none of us but the smartest of asses weren't able to see it coming until it was too late and the horrors were right on our front lawn. But I've noticed that as the years have gone by, after it became apparent that there was no rescue coming, we talk about why the Infected came about less. Perhaps we've just come to accept that our lives are now in a world of shit, and that the only turning back is a bullet to the head.

Today starts with how grim our situation is.

"So what's for dinner?"

"Found these two rabbits lyin' by the sides of the road."

"Christ… you expecting us to eat that? Look at that shit oozing out of their wounds."

"Well, we ain't exactly in a position to choose now, are we?"

"Well, we also ain't in a position where we can afford to get sick."

"We have a fire, damnit. Cook it well, and I'm sure the worst of the bacteria gone die in the fire."

"We gonna have to find some clean food and supplies fast, otherwise we aren't all gonna make it to Boston in one piece.

"For fuck's sake, what makes you so certain any of us are gonna make it to Boston? We haven't even crossed the border into Illinois yet. I lost half my fucking old group crossing Nebraska to crazies, disease, starvation, and infected. Who fucking knows how long it's gone take us to get to Boston from there? Especially with the fucking kids weighing us down? They're the ones that are gonna get sick and tired the first. They're the ones that ain't gonna last long."

"Maybe… if that ha" The busty blonde slaps the guy who brings that up.

"Fuck that thought. We ain't degrading ourselves to that level, y'hear?" I wonder how long any of us can uphold that. In these twenty years, I've seen myself and others degrade ourselves to levels we thought we'd never go to in our old lives.

"Any word from our pair of enterprising scouts?"

"I see only one of 'ems come back so far. So, what did you find?" He asks the scout, small and brown.

"We aren't the only survivors in this neck of the woods. There's a settlement around here… but…"

"But what?"

"They don't look like they're the friendly types. More like the hunting types. There's traps all around their main camp."

"But if they've established a permanent residence in this area… they might be able to have some things we can use."

"I doubt that they'll just be willin' to hand that over to us."

"We need to work out a plan. So, where do you suppose our other scout has gone?" At that moment, we heard screaming and the sound of desperate running feet. Then came the moans, clicks, and other nightmarish sounds that we had grown familiar to in this dark new world, and still feared just as dearly as the second we first heard them.

"Aw, fuck! Infected inbound!" One of the first rules you learn is to always keep a weapon at hand, no matter what your thoughts on gun control may have been in the old days.

I don't even know why I even keep this gun on me. I'm too much of a shaky aimer to hit anything that isn't flat out humping me, and by the time I let one of those things that close it'll be too late. I'm just wasting ammo, to put things short. The scout being chased is too slow. A clicker pounces on him and that's the end of things as it bites into his throat before being sheared away in a hail of bullets. I'm lucky that everyone else here can shoot. I guess that's what a difference between a pampered life and a normal life will do. When some things go missing, maybe some are better suited to cope.

I'm surprised that I last the duration of the rest of the attack without pissing or crapping myself.

Almost like nothing happened, we immediately set back to what we were doing before the infected showed up. We don't even bother burying our dead scout, whatever the fuck his name was. I have to wonder just how fucking desensitized we must have become since the end of the good old life.

Now we talk about what's happened out there. We know the story of what happened to the former US of A. Now it's time to theorize what happened to the rest of the world.

The blonde brings up the topic of Russia. The guy who suggested cannibalism earlier thinks that they were probably prepared for it. Probably back to a standard of Soviet living conditions. Leads us to the neighboring Asian commies. China and North Korea. But does it really matter? They're over there, if there's still anyone in those places alive. We're over here. Why bother fantasizing about what's happened to somebody else when it's yourself you have to worry about? But I don't bring this up. merely listen to them go back and forth.

Somehow what happened to the world leads to what happened to the big names.

The President. "Dead."

Some Supreme Court Justice. "The way he lived. Went out screwing."

That horror author. "Probably High Chancellor of the Dominion of Maine by now. Either that, or he tried to head to Border after a bad dream and died along the way."

The musician. "Probably tried to show the infected all you needed was love and got ripped to shreds in exchange."

So on. Eventually somebody brings up my own name, and this is where I finally pipe up. "Fuck him. He's probably dead and that's for the best."

It's decided tomorrow by Leader Guy that we're going to send a sortie to the survivor's camp. If we can't negotiate a deal with them, we steal what we can. It's a fucking suicide job. Everybody knows that. But everybody is more desperate than logical at this moment.

There will be a team of three. Living Scout is the first one we choose. We'd have picked the other scout, but he is kind of dead right now. Leader Guy says to be fair we're going to pick straws to determine the rest. Everybody but him will be entered. Yeah, that's really fucking fair.

The first stick that comes up goes to Cannibalism Guy. Then the second stick is pulled and it turns out that it's me – the fucking cowardly lion and the guy who can't shoot straight to save his life. If this turns out to be a ploy to cut off all the dead weights by Leader Guy, I am going to be really fucking pissed. Actually, scratch that. I'll probably be dead.

But really, I can't protest.

We're walking along a stretch of abandoned highway, surrounded by flat green countryside. Nothing but grass and other manner of overgrown fauna as far as anyone can see. Hardly any abandoned cars in this road. What cars we do find have long been gutted and left to rot. Occasionally there will be a collapsing farmhouse we can see way off the road and a stretch of broken windmills.

"How much further?"

"Not very long." Scout assures me. We reach a dust trail that veers off the main road. "This should be it... watch your step."

We hear gunshots and instinctively we jump off the main road, into the grass, which doesn't make much difference because this grass is hardly tall enough to hide our bodies. We crawl towards their farmhouse, and we can hear shouting as we see them scurrying about.

"Fucking psycho tourist cunts!" One of them is screaming. To my shock, he is being ridden on by some tiny reddish brownish whatever haired girl, who is stabbing him to death. Next to him, some mangy woman is getting her head smashed in by some bearded fuck's 2x4.

"What the hell are we going to do?" I ask the Scout. Try not to piss yourself, try not to piss yourself cause you might die…

"I have an idea." says Cannibalism Guy. "I say that we wait for whoever's fightin' who to thin each other out. Then we rush in, finish the survivors, and take home the goods."

"Well, that sounds like a plan." But we can't stick to that plan for long because in the upper floor window, I see a flash of light pointing at us. Almost instantly, a bullet is fired and it goes through the eyeball of the Scout, killing him straightaway.

Cannibal Guy loses it. He runs off. Right into a tripwire. I don't even have time to register the Scout's death before my eardrums are rocked by the sound of the explosion. Before I see the flying parts of Cannibal Guy land, I'm already up and running. Somehow I'm lucky enough. The rifle guy's bullets miss me each of them. But before I can make it back to the road, I hear the roaring of an engine and the rolling of wheels. Holy shit, they have a truck! A fucking smoke-spewing truck of death that's coming right towards me! Screaming, but not losing it, I roll off to the side.

Then I think, what the hell will the group do to me if I return with everybody else dead but no supplies to account for our ordeal? Shit, what they might do to me, the desperate starving fuckers, might be nothing compared to what these psychos will do.

So, before I can even think about what the hell I'm doing, I'm running towards hell. I see the bearded fuck aim a revolver and fire at the truck. I hear a tire pop and the truck spins off towards a fiery overturned fate. Holy hell! This guy is good, and his girl too! You know, maybe I should actually join up with them after all this is done! Surely they're good enough to cover my ass.

You know, I can't properly describe what I felt like in the next couple of minutes. It was pure euphoria. Everything bad that had been building up in the last two decades suddenly washed away in one moment of pure ecstasy. What was it? I can't really say for sure. I think that there's an instinct in us all. An instinct just to survive. And when we're pushed to our absolute limits, that instinct takes hold. And we either survive or fall. And I suppose even a coward such as me has a drive to survive. I couldn't believe it. It might've been actually true. That after all these years of running away, which followed the years of pretending, I may have actually been a badass.

Crap, I was killing the hostiles who got in my way like somebody out of a shooter flick. Of course, not as cleanly, and I wasn't sprouting off one-liners. But then I hear something splat at my legs. Fragments of brick. I see the little girl holding a pistol at me. I don't know what I'm thinking, but I run towards her, knocking her to the ground. I have to get her out of here and to safety, like how the hero always saves the girl, show her that I'm on her side.

"Let go of me, you fucker!" She screams as I try to wrest her under my control. Christ, she's a bit crazy!

"Shut up! I'm doing this for you!" I tell her. Alright, not exactly the best choice of one-liner. Who the fuck says that to someone they don't even k- she sinks her teeth into my hand and I scream like a bitch, releasing her.

So much for the badass. My high dies and suddenly I am thrust back into reality. The harsh reality that I live in where there are no heroes and nobody escapes unharmed. I don't even hear her rip out her pocketknife or feel her jump onto me. I feel desperate, lonely, and tired. I just wanna go back to my good old life. Before the first of us were infected, before the last of us lost sight of who we once were and accepted the darker half. The old life where there was no responsibility. Just an upward climb of fame and fortune of the fortunate while the forgotten rest linger and rust away.

But there's no way back, I know this as she plunges her knife into me over and over, for the rest of time. I slump to the ground, last breaths leaving me. Christ, was it really that long ago? That life… so familiar yet so foreign.

I feel like crying, but I've got no strength to do that anymore. Shit… I couldn't even overpower a girl half my size.

She and the bearded man are looking over me.

"You ok, Ellie?"

"Yeah. This fucker tried to grab me."

"Hmph. Who knows what sick things he was planning to do to you." The bearded guy shakes his head. I open my mouth, try to tell them that I didn't mean anything bad. That I was just trying to help. But all that come out of my mouth are unintelligible babble.

"You know, Joel, I've been wondering. How come almost all the people we run into these days just wanna kill us? Can't we just for once run into some guys who just want to hand us free puppies?"

"I don't know. That's just the way things are these days. People just got used to the notion of killing other people for their stuff. Not even kids like you are safe anymore. Y'know, this guy seems sorta familiar…"

"Really?"

"Nah, doesn't matter. That guy was a cowardly fucker. I doubt he'd last as long as this guy has. Or had." The last thing I see before the world goes dark is the bearded man lifting his boot hell and bringing it down.

"Jesus, Joel! He was already gonna bleed out." Ellie said, looking at the asshole's crushed head. "No need... for... that."

"Hey, I needed to be sure he wasn't gonna get back up. Now get a move on and let's search this place."

"Sure thing, Joel."