It’s the feeling of something wet and warm in my mouth that I am first aware of. The thick, smooth fluid ran down my throat like a velvety elixir, leaving a trail of warmth from my tongue to my tummy. As the warmth spreads I regain a little more awareness. I get the sense that I am in motion, but can’t really tell if it’s me in motion, or something I’m riding. It’s a bit wobbly and unsteady, like the back of a horse-drawn wagon. If I regain consciousness and some Nordic man in chains says “hey you, you’re finally awake” I am going to be… happy, actually, that would be cool.

My brain feels like it’s swimming in my skull, sloshing about with each wobble. I can’t see or hear anything, which is rather disconcerting. I can’t really feel anything around my head that would stop me from seeing, and now that I think of it I really can’t feel anything. My legs, my arms, my whole body feels numb and oddly distant. All I have is a sense of taste; something wet, warm, and now a little chewy. I just bit something.

I’m not consciously chewing but I am aware that I am, like my body is just going through the motions and I’m just a passenger witnessing it. 

As the velvety elixir of juices hit my stomach and spread its warmth my senses fade a little into existence. Blurry shapes and shadows begin to form around me and the dead silence turns into an obnoxious ringing. A dull ache fills my head for a moment and fades as I swallow the little bit of WhateverI’mEating. Just as my mouth finds vacancy, something firm and pliable, presses to my lips.

I bite into it.

My body just does it, like an instinctive reflex to feed itself. They often say the body knows what it needs, and I guess what it needs is oddly chewy and wet chunks of something.

As I chew and swallow my vision becomes clearer and I can begin to make sense of where I am. I’m not in a horse-drawn wagon, drat. I’m standing in the middle of the road, a few blocks away from Bella Vista’s.

The area seems pretty empty for what seems like the middle of the day, judging by the placement of the sun. There are a few people wandering around but not nearly as many as I would expect. There are cars but they’re not moving; just abandoned on the road like a bad apocalypse movie. I think one of the cars up the road might be on fire? It kind of looks like it but I can’t quite make it out.

I get the idea to take another bite of what appears to be a giant turkey leg that I’m holding, hoping it might fix my vision further. Where the hell did I get a giant turkey leg? Did I go on a bender at the Ren Faire or something? How very American Princess of me. I take another bite and sure enough my vision clears up. The hazy fog lifts and I can see pretty well. Getting a better look I can tell that the car is, indeed, on fire.

“Huh…” I take a bite.

The streets are pretty messed up. There are cars, newspapers, baseball bats, random shoes and jackets, abandoned bicycles and… bodies?

“Holy shit, I see dead people.”

There are corpses everywhere!

And, by everywhere I mean, like, 5 or so. But, 5 is significantly more bodies than the usual zero that I’m used to seeing. The only dead bodies I’ve ever seen get up and hit the buffet when the director yells CUT!

The other folks wandering around don’t seem too distressed by the dead people, so I guess I won’t worry about them right now either. There must be a reason for all this and I’m sure I’ll figure it out eventually. Besides, it seems a bit too late to help these people now, I mean, that guy’s head is under a rolled car, I don’t think a magic healing turkey leg will fix that.

Speaking of; I take another bite.

God, this thing is delicious!

I wipe some turkey leg juice from my chin and pause when I notice my hand is smeared with red. Like, fresh blood red. Still wet. I check my face, feeling at it with my fingers, searching for notable scars, seeping wounds, or gaping holes. While I don’t feel anything out of place, my fingers all come back more and more blood covered every time I touch my face. I go to the nearest car and lean down, checking myself in the side mirror.

“Holy fuck nuggets!” Most of my face is covered in blood and little chunks of gore. I have a little strip of what looks like chicken skin stuck to my cheek and I peel it off, tossing it away. My brain scrambles as panic sets in. I quickly bring my arm up, aiming to wipe my face with my sleeve, but somewhere between seeing myself in the mirror and now I forgot I was holding a magic turkey leg and I slap myself across the temple with it.

“Ah, Fraggles!” I glare at the turkey leg with evil intent, briefly considering the best way to make it pay for its assault when it suddenly dawns on me that the turkey leg is just a bit too fleshy, a bit too peachy, a bit too slender, and a bit too wearing a golden wrist watch above its five-fingered hand. Turkey legs don’t have five fingers… and they don’t usually wear wristwatches. I’m sure there’s someone in Dubai who puts watches on all their chickens but I doubt any of them have shown up here.

I drop the human arm and stare at it in horror.

I was just fucking eating that. Why the fuck was I eating that?

I step back, putting a little distance between myself and my meal, and bump into someone creeping up behind me. I wince, half expecting to just immediately get clobbered in the back of the head by some teenage squad of monster hunters, but instead, I get a quiet moan right in my ear.

I turn and step away, back toward the dead arm which is less likely to try and get frisky. The dude is in his early twenties and dressed like a college bro, but that’s not the scary part; half of his face appears to be missing. The left side of his head is completely lacking flesh, exposing the muscles of his cheeks, most of his eyeball, and his disgustingly red tongue between his disgustingly white teeth.

“Uh, did I do that? I didn’t bump you that hard?” I raise my hands between us, showing him I’m unarmed and not looking for a fight.

“Greeehhhhgl!” he… um, says? I don’t know what verb best describes when he just did. Throat yodels, maybe? 

“Yeah, uh, I’m really sorry about-” I cut myself off and turn my head slightly, shifting my gaze to something off over his left shoulder. My eyes go wide and my mouth falls open as I raise a hand and point. “Oh shit! A distraction!”

He stares at me, straight in the eyes with his glazed-over, dead expression, for a whole three seconds before slowly turning his head, then his whole body, to look back where I was pointing.

Oh shit, that worked!

I turn to run and immediately trip over the arm I left lying in the middle of my escape route. I go down hard, crashing into the side of the car I had just used as a mirror and loudly banging my shoulder into the door. The noise seems to draw some attention as I hear a cacophony of throat yodeling from the area around me. Two shambling figures come around the car ahead of me, and a third comes up behind college bro.

“Oh, fuck me- wait, no, don’t do that, that’s a figure of speech, just in case you folks are of a literal sort!” Dodged a bullet there. I jump to my feet and search my pockets for a weapon. I don’t find one, which makes sense since all I had to begin with was my lighter, which is very likely still laying on the ground behind Bella Vista’s.

Bella Vista’s!

My mind suddenly floods with recent memories; I was kicking the asses of a few vampires until I realized I had bad information. It was two elders and a fledgling, not two fledglings and a human. I lost the upper hand and then I…

And then I died?

Well… I guess I got better. Or did I turn? Am I a vampire now?

“Am I a vampire now?” Is something I just said at the start of a fight. Fortunately, it doesn’t seem as though the four people stumbling around in my area heard me because they don’t offer me an answer.

I can unpack that major life-altering news later because right now I have, and I’m going to say this because I can’t think of a better noun for them – I have zombies coming at me.

Awesome!

I crouch, grab my turkey leg, and rise, holding it over head by the wrist like a baseball bat. The zombies are slow. I take that back, the zombies are slow as fuck and don’t seem to be in any rush to get to me. I’m fairly certain that if I wanted to I could climb over this car and be gone before any of them realized I was even moving. The college bro is looking straight at me again but isn’t making any move. One of the newcomers brushes against my arm; I scream at them, leap away and bring my armbat down upon their head. It makes a solid connection and the zombie goes down hard, bouncing their head off the pavement with an audible thunk. It lays there for a moment before struggling back to its feet, rising like a grandma turtle on ice. I raise the armbat again to give it another talking to, but when it returns to its feet it turns and slowly shambles away.

“Huh,” I mutter quietly, then turn and swing at another zombie… for science. Like the first, the second one collapses, stands, and wanders off.

“Well, you guys are significantly less aggressive than the movies tend to portray you,” I explain, resting the armbat on my shoulder as I do so.

“I had so many hopes and expectations for a zombie apocalypse and all I get is,” I use my armbat to motion toward the surrounding zombies, “you lot. Look, I’m not, like, mad or anything, I’m just… disappointed.”

I can tell that last point hits hard because the college bro zombie finally turns away from me and starts to wander. I noticed a tear in his eye just as he was turning; I mean, it could have been splattered drool from that gaping hole in his face, but I like to believe he took my words to heart.

Oh well, I guess I can start asking the other questions I was putting aside; like, why the fuck was I eating an arm?

I realize I’m still holding the arm and quickly drop it… then I have a second thought, pick the arm up, remove the watch, and drop the arm again.