When I was younger, I was confused by the word “utilize”. I thought, we’ve got the word use, do we really need a longer version? I looked it up. As it turns out, utilize does not mean to use. It means to make use of something in a way it was never intended to be used. Like a fax machine as a blunt object for killing infected. I did that. I’ve also used a three-gallon jug of water, which was spectacular to say the least, and several well-placed sharpies. I won’t explain. So this post is for my all time dream weapon-that-isn’t-a-weapon, the claw machine claw. It’s general inaccessibility is what makes it so desirable. Its near impossibility is alluring. Under what circumstances would one be justified in using such a weapon? But the possibilities are endless. The cable that it rests on can be used to swing it. The cable inside that cable can be used to clamp down on an unsuspecting zombie face. I was never any good at the claw machine games, but this is one that I would put the practice time into. You might be thinking to yourself, “that doesn’t seem to be a great weapon at all. I don’t trust this Rok guy anymore. What kind of a name is Rok anyway?” Please, consider to yourself the glory, the prestige. If you have killed the infected with this weapon among arcade attractions, you win at the apocalypse. When people gather at the end of this ordeal, as they certainly will, perhaps around a campfire, they will tell stories. “Week one. Lawnmower.” “Week three. Rear View Mirror.” “Week six. Five Iron.” Then, “Week thirteen. Claw Machine Claw.” A hush falls over the crowd. Surely he didn’t say what we think he said. Indeed he did. “Claw Machine Claw.” And he reaches into his bag, pulls it out by the wire: a Claw Machine Claw, still holding the head of a dead infected. The women begin to cry. The men throw up. The children spontaneously combust. And all because of the beauty of it. Nothing can ever be that cool again. I see Zoic shaking her head. Maybe not everyone agrees with me. But I hope one day to have the chance to pull the still beating heart from one of those walking corpses. If their hearts still beat. I’m not actually sure of that one.

There are certain places that I don’t like going to anymore. It’s not the creepy places like abandoned alleys or junkyards or anything. There’s nothing sad about those places, they’re empty, but they’ve always been like that. You can’t ruin them; they look positively cheerful compared to some of the spots I used to like before civilization made a quick exit. I minored in art history in college so I used to do all of my projects at the art museum downtown. I spent a lot of time there. They had a simple but really pretty Chagall and Khalo’s “The Suicide of Dorothy Hale”. Really nice pieces. I tried to copy Frida Kahlo’s piece once without much success. I had a morbid fascination with it. The way she painted death was honest and plain, and I thought maybe the painting could help me understand it better if I tried to recreate it, but I could never get a good grasp of it. I bet I could paint it without any trouble now. Frida wouldn’t have questioned taking up a few guns if Zombies had attacked in her time. She thought the mystery in life was stripped away from her after her body got mangled in her bus accident. Everything had lost its romanticism and the world was horrifyingly clear to her perception. I didn’t really know what that meant before.
I went back to the museum with Rok a couple of weeks in. It’s a mistake I repeated a few times: going back to places that used to be important to me. Needless to say the museum is mostly destroyed from the inside out, someone had used it to hole up in and take out as many zombies as they could, probably a few different people. Maybe they liked the bright lights and open spaces, or maybe they got stuck by a hoard or some other circumstance beyond their control. Most everything had substantial damage. The paintings had bullet holes if they were lucky, but others were completely unrecognizable, blown to bits or covered in dried up gore. A lot of stuff was probably stolen. Though I don’t see why someone would take anything so fragile through the apocalypse. Maybe to protect something. A few glass cases were left unbroken, but the glass was cracked to the point of shattering, so I let them be. The museum was always a little cold, but now it’s a big empty building. There aren’t any paintings, just big pieces of cloth or board with some paint, whatever that’s been spared bullets and intestines and blood. I spent a long time trying to find pieces that hadn’t been damaged at all. I found two. Most of the statues had chips or bullet holes, many were in pieces. A few of the modern art statues looked somewhat improved. It made me think of the Venus de Milo with her missing arms. Would anyone ever find a statue from our time, with bullet holes through the stomach or missing body parts from a misfired automatic weapon? I did get to do one thing I always wanted to do. When I was walking around the museum during college, I always had a temptation in the back of my mind to touch some of the really beautiful, historically significant paintings. I wanted to feel like I touched a piece of history, of something that had been important and would become more important as society continued forward. Now, there really isn’t any reason not to. I found a Monet landscape, a garden with one of the floral arches and a pond. It had a red hand print on the corner, over a particularly pretty waterlily floating on the pond. I don’t know if it was a zombie, unintentionally touching, and destroying, an object of singular beauty, or maybe it was someone dying and touching the painting as a last connection with something not completely fucked up. I let myself touch the floral arch and feel the texture on the pond. Just a little. The blood will do more damage than the oil of my still human hands will. Besides, it’s not going to be a part of the future anymore, probably no other living person will come visit it. I couldn’t find the Frida, the case was smashed and empty. I hope that someone stole it, a morbid reminder of the unabashed destruction chasing behind them, trying to swallow up any and every living thing. The Chagall wasn’t so lucky. I found some of the pieces, blue background, a horse’s ear. I put all of them in a ziploc bag. I don’t have any place safe to put it, so I just keep it as secure as I can, but it will decay like everything else. It’s living some weird other life now, all broken and abstract. Nothing is safe from the virus, you don’t even need to be a living creature to be undead anymore.

“Aliens. With lasers.”
“Global warming.”
“Increased gravitational energy.”
“Misreading the Mayan calendar.”
“Fluoride in the water.”
“Widespread, simultaneous half-suicide.”
“Bear pox.”
“Mutant bees.”
“Bunnies. It could be bunnies.”
“Radiation. From comets.”
“Radiation. From frogs.”
“Space polio.”

When the infection first hit, anyone’s first instinct was to check the radio and television and every other method of communicating with the outside world. There is nothing left. It poses an interesting dilemma. If every part of the state, the country, perhaps the world, was affected simultaneously the same way, then what caused all of this? I’m not a scientist, so I can’t really explain what happened, but I lie awake at night sometimes. Zoic and I compete to come up with the least believable theories, but even the really bad ones (moon rays) don’t seem that bad. We’re completely in the dark.

I can’t really explain how this happened, but everything changed today. The infection seems to have hit some terminal point in its lifespan, and it released the population in its grip. It’s as though everyone woke up from after some blackout drinking with a terrible hangover. Two of the infected that we were racing just previously have woken up and apparently know each other. We brought them inside and made them some tea. They are wonderful conversationalists and quite thankful for our hospitality. They don’t even seem to mind that we killed a couple of their friends. We can be thankful to know that society as a whole doesn’t need to halt entirely. Things just might get back to normal.

I would like to caution you, if you are, for example, hiding in the midst of a giant horde, itching to run outside and greet your resurrected comrades that none of this is true. April fools. Hope you didn’t die.

Sometimes, when we have absolutely nothing to do, we bet on the behavior of the walking corpses. There’s usually one or two within sight of our rooftop. We bet on races. They don’t typically move a whole lot, and they don’t realize that they are racing, so it can be difficult. You have to set your sights low. I bet mine will make it past that trash can over there before yours, or mine will trip over that bump first. It can take all day, but as I’ve said, there’s not much else to do. Plus, it justifies day drinking. Today, Zoic won, but only because my guy fell on hers, knocking him past the bent hubcap. Lame. I burned them both.

I finally saw a hooker zombie on Van Buren. She was totally chilling there, just waiting for customers. She didn’t have much of a face left, but I think she was probably pretty. Also most of her ass was gone, just some red and bones. Rok, ever the gentleman, thoughtfully pondered and observed this for a moment and concluded, “dat ass.”

Nothing of grand importance happened today, but, as usual, we found it difficult to stay still for too long, so we decided to finally go through the next door neighbors’ house. We ignored it at first. They didn’t change when things went bad. They were one of those groups that just sat down and died. At the dinner table no less. They were a typical American family. Three kids, mom, and dad. I should say perhaps that they are the ideal American family. Typical would imply three divorces and at least one Gothic child. They are still in the chairs they died in, which is surprising. You’d think they would have fallen by now. They have reclined. Their heads have fallen back and their jaws hang open. One child is face down in the soup in front of him. Considering they’ve been dead for over a month, nothing much has changed about them. No noticeable decomposition, no smell. The food in front of them has spoiled and gone, but their bodies have not. There’s a small portion of the populace who might find such a discovery a dream come true, but Zoic and I could not bring ourselves to even touch them. Zoic used a wooden spoon from the nearby kitchen to move Mom’s body. Zoic brushed her arm, which moves freely, without a sign of rigor mortis, but caused Mom to topple out of the chair. Her head knocked against the wall and stayed awkwardly positioned. Zoic adjusted her to look more comfortable, still using the wooden spoon.

“I don’t like this house,” Zoic said.

“I have an idea,” I replied.

I found their linen closet. Moments later, I had covered each lifeless form with a sheet. Dad was covered with a burgundy king-size, Mom with a pale blue king-size, and the children with twin Star Wars, Mickey Mouse, and Lilo and Stitch.

“All better,” I said. And it was. Mostly.

This family has a nicer TV than the one we have, but it wasn’t worth the trouble to take it off of the wall mounting. Otherwise, there wasn’t much else to take. I took the car keys out of the bowl by the door, in case we needed use of their vehicles. Zoic found a pillow pet on one of the children’s beds that she insisted on taking. Can’t stand the sight of the deceased, but she can sleep on their pillows. Odd.

Zoic is one.

Rok is one.