Zombies Don't Like Paint

After we had all stopped feeling sorry for ourselves, we started to wonder why. How could that have happened to her? Maybe she had died from whatever illness she had, and the dead were somehow reanimating. That didn't make sense to me at all. Mom got migraines all the time; they always cleared up soon enough. And even if it did somehow kill her, the dead reanimating idea just didn't make sense to me. There was no way there were enough dead people in our neighborhood to wake up again and fill most of our house. It had to be a virus. But she wasn't bitten, was she? When she got home she looked fine. So maybe it was airborne... Well, if that were the case, we were all royally screwed, so I decided not to think about that possibility. She must have been bitten or infected by them somehow, and the only person who might have known how was Sam. So dad and I had a conference with her.

We walked into her room to see her lying on her bed, eyes closed with tears soaking her pillow. She heard us in the room, looked over at us and squeezed her eyes shut once again. Dad asked the questions; I was just along for the ride.

"Sam?"

"Yeah."

"What happened when mom was picking you up?" She didn't respond. "Sam?"

"...There was an announcement that said the school was going into lockdown, and they turned off all the lights and closed the doors and told us to sit quietly against the wall..." Her speech was broken by the occasional sob. "My friends told me that they heard there were zombies around the school and we laughed and our teacher told us to be quiet. She looked really worried. And then there was a knock on the door and everyone looked got really scared, but it was only mom and she was yelling 'Please let me in it's Mrs. Black' and she kept knocking and then my teacher finally let her in and she grabbed me and took me out of the room...

"I wanted to go to my locker and get my stuff but mom said no and we went out the back door because she said we couldn't go out the front… And we got to the car and drove away but the zombies were there and they chased us..."

Dad had had enough of the story, and asked her what he was trying to find out directly. "Sam, did it look like mom was hurt?"

"No."

"You're sure?"

"Well, I couldn't tell because she was wearing gloves and a jacket... but she kept looking at her right hand and she only drove with her left one." And there was our answer.

The wound had been small, probably on her finger, and didn't produce enough blood to soak through her synthetic gloves. Come to think of it, I hadn't seen her right hand at all. She must have been hiding it. She didn't like them, but she knew the movies and knew about how zombies worked. Of course, she didn't believe it, but she knew I did. So she hid the hand.

Suddenly, I became angrier than I ever had in my whole life, and this was amplified because it was at nothing. They killed my mom. Those fuckers killed my mom. But really, who did? Just another normal person, who met the same fate and who had a family that loved him. This whole goddamned world was falling apart, and I needed to let off some steam. I couldn't look at my mom like that, and if there was a shred of her previous self in there she wasn't enjoying it. I stood up abruptly, gaining the attention of my father and sister. I grabbed the .22 and opened the door to allow in that unholy mix of "Oh Christmas Tree" and wretched moaning. I looked down the drop. My mom was there, first in line. I raised the rifle, lined it up, fired, and without a second thought turned my back and walked over to my room. I felt no emotions; it was just a job to be done. I had no remorse or guilt; she was already dead and I had come to terms with that. Behind me, another one took her place.

I walked into my room to see Xiran and Alex completely absorbed in the game. Without looking over, Xiran inquired: "What was that?"

"Nothing", I replied. Alex continued his conversation with one of his teammates. "No, I'm not even joking. We seriously are in the zombie area." Xiran put his head next to the mic and added "Yeah, they're in our house". The man on the other end with the southern accent expressed his disbelief. "Yeah, bullshit. If they're in your house, why haven't they eaten you yet?" I could see this wasn't going anywhere, so I walked in front of the screen and shut off the XBOX. Xiran protested. "Hey, what the hell. We were winning."

"No", I replied. "I've got something better to do." I reached into my closet and grabbed my paintball gun. Alex seemed to have forgotten about Halo. "Oh, pimp."

I looked over the railing to see them, reaching at us hungrily. Well, we were going to give them every opportunity to eat paint, and I knew from experience that that didn't taste very good. About a week before I had bought a case of 2000 paintballs and filled up my compressed air tank. I had about 700 shots in it. Alex was lazy to the point of never taking in his gun in to be fixed, so I had done it for him, leaving it conveniently at my house. He had about 1000 shots in his tank. Xiran had my digital camera, he was going to do the filming. We decided that we could make ourselves famous by posting videos and pictures on the internet; from what we had seen the reporters couldn't get any decent shots from their helicopters. We rested our guns on the banister, and Xiran started filming with the camera pointed at me. I went along with the pre-rehearsed script.

"Hello, everyone. This is going to be the first of several videos conducted by myself, Alex" the camera pointed at him, "and Xiran". He spun the camera around at himself, grinned and waved. "We are hoping that these updates will become major parts in zombie history, and thus will contain many scientific experiments and analyses on zombie behavior. First off, how do zombies react to paintballs? Let's find out. Our first subject will be that stunning young lady down there." Xiran pointed the camera at a woman in her mid-30s. She didn't look much better than any of the others, as her upper lip had been nearly destroyed. Xiran zoomed in. I could be heard talking off-screen. "The first test will be on her reaction to a single paintball."

I fired a shot, and it hit her straight in the eye. She didn't seem to notice, and moaned a bit louder. "And now, a lot of paintballs. Fire!" Alex had a fully automatic gun that he let rip with, while I plugged away with my semi. Her face was completely covered in pink paint, being hit with 15 balls per second. Her head shook as they impacted. We laughed hysterically. When Alex had emptied his gun, I kept on shooting.. That downpour of paint had messed it up good. It blinked quickly and constantly in one eye, looking away from us and moaning sporadically. We laughed harder, and Alex pointed at its pink face. "Ha! Look at that it's retarded!" I kept on laughing, and got an idea. "Just a second." I turned to the bookshelf behind me a got a metal book-stop shaped like a duck. I walked up to the railing, laughed, and chucked it at her head. It hit it with a clunk and she collapsed. Alex and I buckled over laughing, and Xiran pointed the camera at himself, trying to keep a straight face.

"The conclusion: paintballs fuck up zombies."