Zevolution by A.J. Cole (read out loud books txt) 📖

No one ever talks about the poo. I’m not joking. No one. With volumes and volumes of literature about the damnable things, and one movie after another on the subject, you’d think someone somewhere would take the practical approach and discuss the freaking poo. But nope. Doesn’t anyone wonder where all that human viscera, brains and flesh go after they’ve been digested? Huh? Okay, well, try this – did it ever occur to anyone that a large part of why people get caught by these things so easily is because in the course of running away, they slip on zombie poo, fall down, and get eaten?

Look, when you’ve spent days on end without sleep, wondering every ten seconds if you’re about to die a horrifying, painful, lingering death, you start thinking about stuff like this. I mean, sure – zombie poo wasn’t exactly at the top of my list of things to worry about when all the insanity started. It wasn’t. Then, about a billion attacks later, when I was hiding out in what used to be a Circle K, I saw a guy running past the shattered window, a slobbering zombie in hot pursuit. Looked like the guy might make it, but then he slipped on something and it was all over in a matter of seconds.

Later on, after the feeding frenzy was over, the zombie had bumbled off, and there was less of the guy to be grossed out by, I ventured outside to see if maybe he’d been carrying a weapon I could use. No weapon, but I did find what he’d slipped on. And believe me, if you think cat poo smells awful, it’s Chanel No. 5 compared to zexcrement. Yeah, that’s my word for zombie poo. Zombie excrement – zexcrement – get it? Whatever.

Now, you might be wondering how I was able to identify the source of the stinky stuff. Easy. There was a smushed eyeball in it. Blech! And what looked like a piece of vertebra, but I wasn’t about to sift through it to be sure. To say my disgust level reached a new high that day is to win the Nobel Prize for Understatements.

But where are my manners? Ha. Manners. Like anyone needs them at this point. Anyhow, my name is Zara. Okay, no, it isn’t. But there’s no one left to point at me and go, “Hey, that’s not your name!” My real name is flat-out lame, and since I’ve always wanted one that sounded cool, I picked “Zara” because I like it, and…shut up.

So I’m not a zombie hunter. Let’s get that one straight. More like a zombie avoider. I’ve gotten good at it, too, evidenced by the simple fact that none of them have so much as touched a skin cell. On me, that is. When I happen to encounter a pocket of humans who, like me, have eluded the atrocities roaming our streets, I try to share with them all the stuff I’ve learned about zombavoidence. Yep. Another word I made up that I think fits the situation nicely.

I believe it’s been about two years now, since the first occurrence…occurred that started what everyone was already calling “the zombie apocalypse.” Personally, I think we brought it on ourselves by talking about it all the time. Like our collective fears spawned the real thing or something. All those stories and movies I mentioned became the catalyst. I couldn’t tell you how that works, but right now, it so doesn’t even matter.

So this, then, is my story. And since I have no competition in the literary field anymore, I anticipate this will be a best seller. Hahahaha!!!! Right. Sorry. Being alone for too long does stuff to your mind. Okey-dokey. Now, if this was all there was – page after page of me rambling on about zombies, fake names, insanity, and poo, I’d send myself a rejection letter. But it’s not. Something else began to happen around the middle of the second year, and I figured if a day ever came when books were in demand again, this one would give posterity a clear, honest picture of how their new world happened.

Keeping track of the date had become a ridiculous habit, so I can’t tell you when, exactly, the thing happened that told me everything was about to change. I just know it was raining, and I was sitting in an attic blissfully free of moaning brain-suckers (they went after intestines a lot, too, but seemed to save the brain for last, like it was dessert or something). The neighborhood in which I’d wandered had already been invaded – I knew this because of the number of skeletons scattered around. I even saw one up in a tree, but couldn’t get my mind around how that had happened, so ignored it. All of the houses’ doors had been broken down, their interiors torn apart, and other than the all-too-familiar, wretched odor of zexcrement, the place was deserted. I won’t say it was a ghost town, because no self-respecting ghost would be caught – ha! I almost said “caught dead” – in such a smelly place.

I’d learned to wrap something around my face with whatever herb I could find tucked into the folds to keep the stench from making me ill, another survival technique I’d gladly shared with others whenever they were around.

What made me furious was how those people often ignored my advice. And why? Maybe because I didn’t wave a gun at them first. Or maybe because I’m only seventeen. And a girl. And not athletic, much less impressive-looking in a “I can kick your butt” kind of way. I’m about five-foot-six and thin, but still curvy. Before the attacks, I was about five-foot-six and a lot curvier. Not having access to fast food and Little What’s Her Name snacks is an effective way to lose weight. Just sayin’.

So on this rainy day as I sat in the attic of what looked like a nice home once, I was staring out the small window at one end of the long space, noticing how, ironically, the zexcrement had turned out to be a powerful fertilizer. The grass in this neighborhood was an almost jewel-like green, and all the trees were lousy with thick leaves. Not too strange had it been the middle of summer. But unless the advent of zombies had somehow screwed with the weather patterns, the light snowfall of the night before told me summer wasn’t quite here yet.

“Huh,” I said aloud. I talked to myself out loud whenever I was sure nothing could hear me, to make sure my vocal chords were still working. “That’s some powerful manure.”

And that was when I saw him. A zombie in a business suit. Strange. Why? Well, one thing no one had anticipated in all their zombie-telling was the fact that as soon as person turned (assuming he or she had avoided being consumed), the clothes came off. You think the blood on their twisted faces was gross? Try dealing with an out-of-shape, elderly male zombie with everything – and I mean everything – hanging out! That may well be the true horror of this so-called apocalypse.

Yet there one stood in a dark gray business suit, strolling through the rain, and staring around. When he got to the side lawn of the house I was in, he stopped directly below the window. I shrank back, thinking he had somehow sensed or smelled me. But then he moved on. Only right before he did, he spoke.

Dude! Zombies don’t speak! Ever! Other than the moaning thing, that is. But this one, all dressed up like he was on his way to the office, had said, “Yes. Good thing.” He’d spoken in a monotone, his voice raspy, but in the silence of the day, it had carried clearly to my shocked ears…okay, my ears weren’t shocked, per se. I mean, if I’d had them connected to wires by little clips and then plugged the wires into an outlet, yeah. They could be shocked. But…oh, come on! You know what I'm saying!

After he’d gone, I tried to figure out what this could mean. I’m pretty good at deducing things. I’m even good at coming up with clever sayings and bad puns. Like if a zombie bit a pig and it got away, then turned, and proceeded to turn all of the other pigs, we’d have a zombie aporkalypse. Hahahahah!!!! Crap. Did it again. Sorry.

What was I saying? Oh! I was wondering what…are you snickering at me? Stop it. Anyhow, after some deep thought, I realized that if there was one zombie that could talk, there would probably be others, or soon would be others. Did this mean they were regaining the ability to think, to reason? The next time a bunch of uncontaminated humans came around, I’d discuss this idea, see what they thought about all this.

A week later I found out. I had made my way to a store that looked as if it had, like the neighborhood, already been attacked and then abandoned. I knew the blasted things didn’t eat canned food, probably because they couldn’t get the cans open, so it was a good guess that there’d be some left. I crept inside (it never hurts to be cautious) and avoided the crunchier stuff on the floor as I made my way toward the canned items aisle. The store wasn’t all that big, but not as small as a convenience store, so there were lots of tall shelves behind which anything could be hiding.

When I got to the aisle where the soup was, I started browsing what hadn’t been taken or destroyed. I noticed a certain brand had gone virtually untouched and snorted. The sodium content in that kind of soup was enough to –

“You! Stop right there!”

I jumped, then froze. “It’s okay,” I said, trying to sound all cool and calm. Didn’t work. My voice was shaking so bad, I almost sounded like I was trying to sing.

“Are you damaged?”

“No.” I knew what the guy meant – it was everyone’s term for those who had been nibbled on or scratched but hadn’t yet turned. “I’m untouched.”

“Uh-huh. Turn around.”

I did. And no. This wasn’t where I found myself facing the most gorgeous guy on the planet, muscles bulging on bare arms, blah, blah. It’s where I found myself mere inches from a single-barrel shotgun, at the other end of which was a guy who looked like he’d lived in his mother’s basement before the attacks. I mean, he wasn’t wearing whitie-tighties or anything, but despite the growing lack of food sources, he was still pretty pudgy, the sparse stubble on his chubby cheeks making him look like a younger, slightly slimmer version of Michael Moore. And he wasn’t even a little bit gorgeous.

“Um, I was just getting some soup,” I said, jerking a thumb toward the shelves.

“I can see that. Strip.”

“What?! Are you out of your mind? I – no! Forget it, you pervert!”

He rolled his eyes and lowered the gun. “That’s not…I just wanted to check to make sure you didn’t have any z-damage.”

Huh. I liked that. “Z-damage.” I’d have to add that to my apocalypse lexicon. “I don’t. Trust me. Because I’m not getting undressed for you.”

He nodded, thrusting out his jaw, eyes narrowing. “Yeah, okay. You’re too coherent to be close to turning.”

When a person got injured by a zombie, that turning thing usually happened within the first hour or so. From when I’d entered the store until he said that, there had been enough time for me to start slurring my words a tiny bit had I been damaged. “Exactly,” I said. “Now may I please get some soup and a few other things? I’m starving.”

“Sure. Sorry if I scared you.”

“Yeah – same.” I began removing