Going through old folders tonight, I found The Lonely White Walker—a Walking Dead fanfic I wrote back in 2012—and I was honestly stunned to realize people had reviewed it. Not just clicked on it… actually read it, followed it chapter to chapter, left thoughtful comments, waited for updates.
I had forgotten that entirely.
And honestly, seeing those reviews hit me harder than I expected.
I’m getting ready to release a new book, which means I’m also quietly preparing myself for every possible reaction—including the worst ones. That anxious little voice that wonders if anyone will connect with it, if anyone will care, if putting something personal into the world is going to feel worth it afterward.
So stumbling across those old comments tonight felt unexpectedly grounding.
People did care.
They noticed things I was trying to do with the writing. They commented on the imagery, the pacing, the emotional tension, the metaphors. Some were excited for updates. Some quoted favorite lines back to me. Some just said they were invested and wanted more.
It was such a small thing in the grand scheme of life, but reading those words now felt like hearing from a past version of myself through other people’s eyes.
A reminder that even years ago—before any of this current chapter, before publishing plans, before AI conversations, before all the noise—I wrote something that connected with readers.
And that felt really good to remember.
At the time, I was married, teaching middle school English, and completely immersed in stories all day long. My life was grammar lessons, sentence diagrams, Poe, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, The Most Dangerous Game—all the weird gothic and psychological stuff I still love now. I was spending my days teaching narrative structure and symbolism and voice… and then coming home and trying to write my own.
I remember telling myself I should practice shorter pieces. Learn restraint. Keep things tight.
Even then, apparently, I struggled with that.
Because The Lonely White Walker starts as a short concept and slowly becomes this strange psychological character study about identity, transformation, memory, loneliness, and what happens when something inside you remains human while the outside has changed completely.
Which… sounds familiar.
Reading it now, I can see so much of what would eventually become my later work. The fractured perspective. The interior monologue. The obsession with consciousness inside altered bodies. Grief. Isolation. Becoming. The tension between the self and the thing the self inhabits.
I was writing toward those ideas long before I knew I was.
And if I’m being honest, finding it also feels meaningful for another reason.
It’s proof that I could write before AI entered my life, too.
I’ve been open that AI is part of my current process. I don’t hide that, and I don’t plan to. But finding this piece from 2012—and rereading comments about the metaphors, the structure, the voice—felt like a reminder of something important.
The voice was already there.
The instincts were already there.
The themes were already there.
AI didn’t invent that part.
It’s just another tool I use now to explore further, faster, or from a different angle. But the writing itself—the weirdness, the emotional obsession, the recursive thinking, the long-windedness, the inability to leave a strange idea alone—that’s been with me for a very long time.
Apparently even back when I was writing from the perspective of a walker named Rick Grimes.
Anyway… I may repost it here soon. Along with some old comic strips I found from that same era.
Kind of fun seeing where the trail began.
The Resurrection
I was born in blood, but won’t begin at my grim beginnings. No, I’d rather start at my rebirth. Well, technically it was my third birth, but just like the mad world we inhabit now, nothing is really what it seems.
I awoke to myself in the local zoo while eating the remains of an African elephant. At that time I became aware that what I was doing served no purpose. I was hungry and eating to satiate that hunger, but no matter how much I ate, the pains of hunger never left. What I was not aware of, at that time at least, was that I was, no, sadly, AM a zombie.
It took a long time for me to truly have thoughts. Now, I can put together what were just sounds, shapes, and colors. It started with those- the colors. First I saw red, next came blue, white, grey, and green.
The blue I now know was the sky; the white, the clouds. The green was the color of the trees and bushes of the zoo I awoke in. But the most terrible to remember- the one that still gives me those old familiar stirrings- is the red and grey.
I can’t bear to tell you about them now, for I fear I still have trouble keeping a grip on my thoughts once the bloodlust sets in. I will tell you eventually, though.
Instead, I will tell you that I have now traced how I came into that zoo on that day. I have retraced every step now at least a hundred times. You see, in the before, that zoo was a favorite spot of my family. We would go to see the birds, monkeys, and most of all the elephants. My son loved the elephants.
After I awoke, as I probed my animal mind- the mind that drove me before I awoke- I came to see how it was driven by my most base knowledge, needs, and memories. I went to the zoo so often when I was alive that my animal mind was able to walk there as if it was the most natural thing in the world to do. I had done it so many times that it was programmed into my psyche.
Now, it didn’t take me one afternoon to figure this all out. Since I awoke, time doesn’t work at all the same as it did before. I am just now starting to be able to track time in larger increments than one day (when it’s bright) and one night (when it’s dark and my whole body slows just a bit from a cold I cannot feel as you do, but am aware of from its effects).
At this point I figure I have been dead for a least a year and reborn for about half of that time. At one point I could track time also by the changes in my body, but lately the desiccation has slowed, though I could not tell you why this is happening.
But really, I should get back to the point of this story. There will be more to come, but this is the one I have to tell first if I’m going to tell it at all, though it is also the hardest one to tell as well. Others get more complicated, but this one tears at me so that the struggle to stay here- within myself- and not become the animal again is almost unbearable.
So, first there were the colors. The next thing to come was my hands. You get to sort of ignore your hands after a while, but when I first discovered mine again it was with the fascination of a child. At first all I saw was their motion. Next, fingers came into my awareness. Having those was like having a new toy. I sat on the ground picking up things for hours- maybe days. Dirt, stones, sticks, and…Worse things, bad things, all got touched, examined, and sometimes broken.
It took a long time for me to figure out that one was not like the other. One was full, useful. The other was weaker and… Less. I searched and poked and prodded to figure the difference out, until it became clear that one had fewer fingers than the other; two less, in fact. Not that a concept like two existed then. That came later. I remember holding my hand up to the sun and seeing the crescent shape missing on one hand, and the five-fingered perfection of the other.
This was when I finally started to get that something was just not quite right with me. I became acutely aware of the rest of me- my legs, my arms, my chest, my neck, my face and head. I searched them all, but could not find a reference in my mind to tell what was and what was not where it should be and I could not remember what state they should have been in. There was something on my chest which shined in the light that distracted me for a long time, until I figured out that it was attached and would not pull off easily. Its five pointed shape pricked my finger once, and blood so stale it was black seeped out and smeared onto the shiny object as I played with it.
At that moment a loud sound rang out in the distance. I started to walk towards it. Actually, my animal self began to walk towards it. My new self was telling the animal to run away as quickly as possible, but the animal was still much more in control, and my body began the long, slow, stuttering shuffle toward the noise.
I could smell the living blood before I saw the first signs of it. It shook me even deeper into myself, until the animal was everything. I kept trying to tell it to stop, to turn back, but it was ravenous. It was driven to feed, to tear, to destroy life. Eating, however, gave it no sustenance, and once it was done and the kill quit moving, I stopped to get my first look at it.
He lay sideways on the ground and the leaves cradled his body like the warm sheets of a soft bed. They partly obscured his face. His neck was torn open in a crescent shape and his left shoulder- the one facing up- had a ice-cream scoop sized hole torn out. Blood covered his red jacket, and the darker crimson on the bright red made him look like he was covered in blood.
I observed this all from my hiding spot in the back of the beasts mind. It would be so easy to slip back and away, to lose myself completely and let the beast take over completely. I think even to this day how many of us may be out there running like forgotten clocks. I wonder how much of us could be more like myself, yet who have given up and let the animal-us take over.
I decided then and there that I would not let him rule me. I saw his kill before me and knew I had to see him before my animal self returned to its usual path to the zoo and home again. I tried to take control of my body. I wanted it to bend down, to move the boy to the side, to look my kill in the face so that I could tell it how sorry I was, even if I knew the words would be impossible to get out of my ruined lips. I could not, however, get my body to listen to my commands. The beast was simply too strong. He began to walk away and I panicked. I let loose a scream that may have only been in my head, but it was enough to throw him off. He stumbled and fell right beside the body.
The movement and wind the splash of my body falling beside him blew the leaves hiding his face away. And I saw him. He was so young. His eyes held shut in frozen pain, but his face was uncovered by the blood that had fallen from his neck. It looked both pained, innocent, and oddly at peace. Like he had expected this eventuality and was relieved it had finally come.
Beside him the butt of a rifle peaked out of the leaves. A fresh kill -a small squirrel- was tied to his belt with a rough piece of twine.
I think about it often now. What if he had never had that gun? Who gave it to him? Why was he out hunting on his own? Where were they when he needed them? I have answered all of these questions for myself now, at least as much as they are possible to answer. I did not like the answer to a single one of them, but I’m getting ahead of myself again.
The Resurrection: Part 2
There is a section of time I can’t recall after I saw the boy’s face. I know I ate some kind of animal, because I remember seeing the red of fresh blood on my hands. I know my animal self resumed his daily walk to and from the zoo. I don’t know how long it took for me to come back, but it couldn’t have been too long, because I heard the screams soon after, but I’m getting ahead of myself again.
Once I came back, I spent some time observing the beast from way back. I watched its behavior; what drew its attention, what didn’t, and how it moved. I tried little ways of influencing it at first. I would make it lift a hand or stop or start walking. I would make it turn and use the head to look at my surroundings.
I felt completely outside of myself at times, at others I felt like I was living in a body someone else controlled. I tried to speak, but lungs with no air make no sound. My body had been out of the habit of breathing for so long that they had filled with a black, viscous fluid that must have been blood that entered my esophagus as I fed. I know this was there because it came up in a thin stream when I tried to breath. I didn’t try that again for a long time, but that’s another story.
The animal me had taken us back to our house one evening when I heard the screams. They we’re muffled, as all sounds are now, but I knew they were close.
I was in the upstairs bedroom that the animal tended to stay in at night, roaming the room since we did not sleep anymore. My animal self began to walk toward the noise knowing that there would be fresh blood to corrupt, tear, and consume. I knew its intentions, and was able to, at the last minute, throw our hand forward and slam the bedroom door shut. The beast ran into the door as it slammed shut and the blood rage took over so that I was driven further back into us. He beat and clawed at the door, and then crumpled into a heap by it when our knee gave out. He lay there slowly chewing the wood of the door with our exposed teeth.
I was finally back within us enough again to do more than just observe his actions, and I tried to open the door. Parts of my memory had returned, but parts were still blank. I knew that the thing in front of me was called a door, and I knew that it could be opened. I just didn’t know how to do it.
It seems like such a small thing now that I am much more myself -or at least as much of myself as I will ever be- but at the time, figuring how to open that door was a puzzle. I can laugh about it now, but at the time it was so frustrating I thought about jumping out of the upstairs window beside me. It took me ages to figure out that I was opening the door with the wrong hand- the hand missing a thumb. I’ve now trained myself to use the other hand for almost everything, but it took a lot of practice.
When I was finally able to turn the handle enough to open the door, it lurched off the hinges and partly fell to the floor, almost taking me with it. I recaptured my balance and walked to the window- trying to keep the beast in-check so that I would not kill again. The danger I was potentially in never dawned on me.
I walked to the downstairs window and looked out. There was a woman with long brown hair standing next to a man with tan skin. They were deep in some secret talk. Behind them, a man with short-cropped blonde hair with a bow and arrow strapped to his back walked. He was coming down the path to a nearby house that he had just emerged from.
As he approached the two, they moved away from each other a bit, but not before he gave her a squeeze on her shoulder which stirred something deep within me that was not the beast, and so faint that it was barely perceivable. The three grouped up and the blonde man spoke to the tan man and long haired woman, and then they both moved toward the house- my house.
They were but a footstep away when a green 4×4 turned a corner honking its horn and pulled up to the house. The long haired lady, the tan man, and the blonde haired man turned and started to speak to the pretty young girl with short brown hair behind the wheel of the car and the young Asian man beside her.
I desperately wanted to listen to the conversation, but at the same time the beast wanted to run outside and tear, bite, and devour. To try to calm the beast I had to grip the window frame with my hand do tightly that my nails dug into the wood, causing two of my blackened fingernails to stick in the wood. Only the darkness of the house and the distraction of the visitors outside prevented me from being seen. At this time I was free of the knowledge of what humans do to my kind if they catch them. I also felt a connection to the visitors, like I could trust them. I was much more concerned with quelling the beast and finding out what they were doing here.
I listened intently, fighting to hear against the rot in my ears. Most was just a muffled staccato of sounds, some deep and some higher. As they continued to talk I could tell from watching their mouths as I listed to the sounds that the deep tones were the men and the higher were the females.
I tried to understand what they were saying. I could tell they were upset. The long haired woman especially looked distraught. The two men said something to the women, and then the Asian man got out of the car and walked up to the two other men. Then all three disappeared to the side of the house. I knew I had to go that way because the back door -the one I have been leaving the house through- was wide open. I knew it was my only means of escape. Part of me also hoped I would run into them, that they would know me. That they would tell me who I was and what was happening to me.
I entered the kitchen where the back door was located. The contrast of the light to the darkness of the room made the outside look like a bright white void. I exited the door and stepped outside
The light blinded me for a second. If the three men had discovered me at that moment, I know now that I would be a dead… man. At the time I was blissfully unaware of such things. I noticed my hand felt different. I looked down and saw through the blinded haze that the fingernails that had been buried in the window frame had pulled off when I removed my hand. Dark viscous ooze dripped from my hand to the boards of the stairs below. I moved down the stairs and walked toward where the men had disappeared.
They were around the corner from me when I was stopped dead still by the sound of their voices. I stopped to listen. At the time, what they said had made no sense, but now I have replayed it in my mind enough that I have pieced the words together.
“We found a trail of blood in the woods and a hat nearby. There were signs of a struggle, but no body. We think the hat is Carl’s”
I did not know the significance of their words at that moment. All that I knew was that they then left, and something told me I needed to follow. I set one foot in front of the other as I started following the car as it left, back toward the path I had walked for what feels like a million times. I was going back towards the woods, back toward the zoo for one last time.
–
The Resurrection: Part 3
The path was so familiar now that it was like an old friend to me. It was ingrained in me- as much a part of myself as the fingers on my hands or the skin on my body. The path winded and weaved through still suburban bliss, but soon the little cookie-cutter homes began to spread apart from each other. Then they disappeared completely, to be replaced by only trees and shrubs.
Once, when I first awakened, there were the sounds of rustling in the trees and squirrels could be seen popping in and out from under and within the trees. They were all gone now, devoured, desecrated, and discarded. Their bones could be seen littering the sidewalk my feet tread upon. I wondered how many of the bones were put there by the beast before I became myself.
Now, there were no sounds except a slight rustling of the wind caressing the leaves. Rarely, a songbird would cry out, filling the area with its plaintiff cries that sounded as if it were searching for a response that refused to come.
No matter how many times I walked this path it always felt like I had new eyes when I was upon it. The first times I walked it while aware it was the sounds that stood out the most, the second time the colors. Now I saw the landscape in high definition. I was not truly in a forest, but only a wooded area that lasted a few blocks. I could see houses and some shops peeking through the gaps in the leaves to the right of me. I looked to the left to see if it was the same, but here there seemed to be real forest, although now I was starting to doubt it was as vast as it had first seemed to me. I walked into the brush and entered the forest. It was the first time my route had changed since I had become myself. It almost like the world was opening up with every step, but then I heard the voices and everything went quiet inside of me again.
They were distant and loud. One was screaming in a panicked roar. I heard arguing and some voices got farther away. All was silent for a moment, but then I heard a calling scream approaching my direction. I hobbled over to the brush and threw myself down. I lay still as I could, which was very still since I was no longer breathing.
The bush opened across the clearing from where I had and two forms emerged. One was the blonde haired man with the crossbow, the other an older female with short-cropped, sandy grey and black hair. They called out for someone, but the name was hard to understand at first. When it became clear I recognized it as the name they used at the house, the familiar name. They walked within a foot of where I was hiding, but the brush and detritus hid me well and they wandered past without seeing me.
I stayed absolutely still for as long as it took for the voices to fade. When I thought I was safe, I lifted my head to take in my surroundings a bit more.
I was in a small clearing in the forest, which otherwise was wood grown thick together- I know now that they were fir trees and their plumage made an almost comfortable bed to lay on. Light shone threw the needles and branches, creating bright circles of light that dotted the darkened wood around me. My hiding spot was obscured even further by this darkness, and was probably my savior when the visitors walked by.
The ridiculousness of it all struck me suddenly. Why had I come here? What did I hope to accomplish? Was I afraid they would find my kill? Was it the guilt that nagged at the back of my mind that had led me here? Did the animal -who had been so frighteningly and suspiciously quiet for the last few hours- luring me here hoping for another kill? Or, was there a part of me that wanted to be discovered, to be killed. Because something inside of me knew deep down that if they found me, that’s what they would do.
I shook my head to clear the thought away and decided that it was time to leave before those questions were answered. I started to push to rise, and was just about erect when a shape exploded out of the shrubs on the other side of the small clearing.
The form came into focus, and I saw a small, tan, Asian man with a baseball cap on staring straight at me. He sees frozen by the site of me, his body planted in place while his right hand held the left and crimson liquid gushed from the grip.
The smell and sight of the blood awoke the animal. He was ravenous, desperate to consume and defile the source of the blood. It moved me forward; this rush was stronger than anything I could control. I felt my hands rise, groping towards the man as he stood, eyes wide open and too shocked to move. I took another step and them he spoke.
“Rick… Don’t.”
His body finally started working again and he stepped back. That was when I realized that he knew me. I wanted to stop myself, to somehow speak back to him. I managed to stop myself from taking that next step forward. I opened my mouth to try to speak, but only managed to make an awful clicking, gulping sound.
I knew this man once and he knew me- before. I could not remember him, though. He was familiar. Not as familiar as the long-haired woman had been, but there was something more there. It wasn’t an intense knowing, though, and all I really knew was that there was more there – a connection I had with this thing that was not there with others.
All of a sudden I saw hands reach out and grab the man. Then the blood came, strong and pungent, like a fire ripping through me. For a second I thought that the arms were mine and that the animal had won and had moved our body in for the kill while the rest of me was so busy trying to think about what my connection was to this man. But then I realized that I had not moved that I was still standing in the same spot I was when I managed to stop myself.
I tried to fight the beast, which was desperate to consume the life force before it was snuffed out, and I was not strong enough to fight it. I felt my body move forward. As it bent down to join in the feast, I saw the attacker crouching over the man, who had crumpled on the ground of the clearing and whose legs were busy convulsing in a sickening gait that made him look like he was trying to run.
My eyes traced the small profile of the attacker. I then saw the short-cropped hair and then the crescent-shaped hole in his neck. With horror, I realized that the attacker was the boy from before, the boy I had killed- The familiar boy.
The Resurrection: Part Four
The beast was still in control and devouring the boy’s kill when the arrow whizzed by and stuck into the nearby tree with a deep ‘thunk’. It vibrated back and forth a little bit from the force of its flight and its sudden impact into the tree. Before I knew what really happened, our body was up and running- straight in the direction out of which the arrow had flown. The man with short-cropped blonde hair stood trying to reload his bow, which was empty from having just fired.
His hands moved quicker as I moved closer and his eyes opened wide- like he had never seen one of my kind move that fast. He lined the new arrow into the shaft, but it slid out a bit as he instinctively began to move back a step because I was closing in even more. And then I was on him.
We both tumbled to the ground, our bodies twisting together in a grim tableau that looked like an octopus trying to kill itself with its own tentacles. I grabbed the crossbow from his left hand as he reached for a knife strapped on the right side of his belt with his left hand. His hand had just reached it when the crossbow slammed down on his temple with a sickening crunching sound.
He lay on the leaf-covered ground with his head turned to the left, exposing his neck to the fresh air. The beast in me could smell the blood gushing from his new head wound and it wanted to bite down. But the part that was still me heard the distant rustling and stomping sounds of others like the blonde man approaching. Somehow, I got enough control over myself to stand and flee.
The branches whipped at my face as I ran. I almost turned in the direction of town- which I know now would have exposed me and most likely lead to my death- but instead, I ran deeper into the woods. I bounded over a hill and fell over something large and round. I lay there dazed for a second, a strange hissing sound filling my ears.
I shook my head to clear it and pushed down on the ground to stand. I felt even smaller round shapes –rocks underneath my fingers. I stood and saw a river in front of me that stretched all the way into the horizon. It disappeared to the right, houses and buildings littering the shore up in the distance. I turned to the left and moved upstream, where the waters turned and were obscured by banks and hills.
The rapids pulled against me and water splashed around my legs as they pumped, shooting streams of white beads danced around them. Every few steps my feet would threaten to slip out from underneath me as they hit moss and algae-covered stones. One time, a branch grabbed hold of my ankle and started to pull me down. I fell into the water to my neck, barely catching myself from being submerged in the waist-deep rush of the stream.
As I fought the pull of the water, I looked to the right and saw an opening in the rocky shore that was completely obscured by an overhang of branches, stone, and mud. It reached back, large enough for me to wedge in- a perfect hiding spot, at least for a moment.
After a few moments, I allowed myself to imagine that I had gotten away. Then, I heard splashing approaching from the direction I had from which I had come. The splashes came in quick, stuttering bursts, and there were so many of them that it sounded like an army was after me. They slowed as they approached. Then voices rang out.
“He couldn’t have gotten this far,” said the first voice.
“You didn’t see him, man. He was fast! Faster than any walker I’ve seen before.” The second voice sounded frustrated and a bit more frustrated than the first.
“Are you sure he was a geek?”
“Yeah, you should have seen him. He was all messed up.”
“I told you,” added a third, cold voice.
“Was he bit?” asked the first voice.
“Yeah, but he was gut-shot, too,” replied the second voice. “And there was blood. Dried blood.”
“He could’ve been shot after he ran off,” said the cold voice.
“I guess, but why would Rick run? I don’t want to act like I was a big fan of the dude, but I do know one thing about him; He wouldn’t have left Lori and Carl.”
“Maybe it was someone else’s blood. He did eat Glenn. Maybe he wanted to spare them the pain of watching him turn. Maybe he was just scared. Who the hell cares? The point is that he is done and we are here. Now, what do you want to do, let him go, where he can make more geeks just like him? Or, should we find him and put him down?” The cold voice waited one beat and then continued. “Well, I’m sure as hell not going to let him kill any more of us. I’m going to find him.”
Splashes walked away, up the river towards town. They grew more distant, until they were inaudible.
“That dude is full of it. There was blood, sure, but there was a wound too. And not one that was made after he died. Those don’t heal. This one looked like it had healed a bit.” “Shane might be full of it, but he’s also in charge now.” “And when the hell did that happen? I don’t remember and nomination or election process.” “Things don’t work like that anymore. Shane has Rick’s guns AND he’s the best of us with them.” “Dale says Shane killed Rick.” “And how does he know THAT for sure? He wasn’t there.” “I trust Dale more than I ever will that guy.” “Well, I don’t see any tracks off the stream. If he followed it, he should be straight ahead. I’m going on.” “Don’t you think we should go watch after Lori?” “Dale and Andrea have her. And Carl’s still there. I’m not going back till that gets taken care of.”
One set of splashes continued up the stream, and the next set continued after a moment later. I sat back and held tight to the inner wall of the space, and knew I was not going anywhere for a long time.
The Resurrection: Part 5
I stayed in the water for a long time, my hands gripping at the moss, roots, and dirt of the small enclosure where I had hidden. I know that it got dark and then light, and then did the same thing over again. So, at least two days went by before I emerged. When I did so, it was a slow and painful process. My legs had swollen to twice the size they were before, and the color of the skin on my arms had faded as white as clouds.
I never heard them pass back by, but I did hear some screaming back from the forest, and later the sounds of engines pulling away from the area. They were all very faint over the sound of the rushing water, but my attention was so sharpened by the ever-present danger that everything seemed to be clearer, more there than it was before.
Once I pulled myself to the stony shore, I lay there until I felt like at least some of the moisture had left my body. I looked down the span of my body while lying there, and saw that the tops of my feet were bulging out of my black shoes, like grotesque pillows haphazardly stuffed into a pipe they were too big to fit in. I tried to lift my arms, but they were weak from holding on to my little niche. I realized the weight of my shirt was making me feel even heavier, so I lifted it up over me and scootched it off of me while still laying down.
I sat up just enough to remove my pants and shoes, and lay there naked in the hot sun for hours. I didn’t realize it at the time, but that was a task that would have been utterly impossible to achieve before. Sitting, that is. Before, I had to move all the time, like a shark. I was becoming more myself, although who exactly that was, was a total mystery to me at the time.
As the sun dried me up, I was vaguely aware of a strange new sensation that I had no exact word for, but now know to be warmth. It was barely there, like a thought you have for a second and then forget, but it was there.
After I had baked for long enough that I could more easily move about, I sat up and tried putting my clothes back on again. This was harder to do than I had thought, and it made me wish I had just left them on in the first place. I managed to get my shirt on quite easily, although I had not unbuttoned it, so I could just pull it over my head. The arms were trickier, but I got them after a few tries.
I managed to get the pants on, but had to sit when pulling them on, and they would not button up again. I had to pull the zipper up as high as it would go, which was a tricky proposition with hands as swollen as mine were. I couldn’t get the shoes back on at all. I tried for a few minutes, but they would not fit on my swollen feet. I was starting to get worried because I had been out in the open for so long, so I shakily stood up and left them behind.
I walked in the direction of town, following the banks of the river as close to the brush as possible. I did not leave for an area where I was exposed until I came as close as possible to the first building. I walked beside and then in front of it, wary and looking back and forth in each direction. Once I get my bearing, I had to stop and decide which way to go. If I went right, I would have been heading home. Left would head back toward the forest and the people.
I knew they were dangerous, but figured it would be even more dangerous to go home without finding out where they were, if they were still here at all.
I searched, but all I found was the remnants of trash from their camp and an otherwise empty town. A few times I got worried that I had become lost, but the size of the town made it hard to get too turned around. These instances usually involved me getting worried I had lost my way and then looking around until I saw some landmark that signified my position. Soon, the sun started to go down and I began to move back towards home.
When I arrived, I found a red car parked a few houses down from my house and the door of the house open. I walked closer, looking for signs that the living had been there, but the inside of the house had already been turned back to the wilds from my comings and goings. The outside was even worse, with no one to tend the sprawling yards and gardens.
There were no lights, something I knew from somewhere deep down that the living had to have to operate at night, so I walked up the stairs at the front of the house and in the front door, confident that they had moved on.
I stepped onto the living room rug and began heading towards the stairs to the second story. When I was halfway to them, I heard a rushing sound and a great impact knocked me forward into the wall in front of me. My body hit, and the wall buckled a bit, wallpaper tearing into a canyon shaped gash that exposed the dry wall beneath. My body began to slump and turn. The whole world got dimmer and time seemed to slow.
I started pushing off the wall. I wanted to rise up and run, but before I could, three claw-looking spikes emerged from the dark, ripped through my body and pinned me to the wall. I looked down at my right shoulder to see them gouging through my shirt and the skin underneath. Black oozed out in a slow, sickening race to the floor below me.
My eyes went back to the claws, which all met at a piece of wood. My eyes followed the wood up and saw two hands gripping it. Sweat covered arms then led to two piercing eyes, which were connected to a beak of a nose. As the face came into focus-the shaved head, the small, tight mouth- I recognized it as the tan man from before. The tight mouth bended into a grimacing smile, and then the man spoke.
“Good to see you again, Rick.”
As he spoke, he pushed the claw in deeper and lifted. He was looking at me with disdain, like I was something beyond repugnance. But there was hate, too. A hate that was so deeply rooted, it had poisoned his very soul. I knew that I was, in fact, disgusting. I was unnatural. But I also knew that his face contained pure evil. There was a malevolence so sickening that was written on his face that it made me look away. I heard his hands move away from the tool and then he walked away. He paced back and forth around the room like a storm brewing, and then he exploded.
“You were supposed to stay,” he screamed. I heard the sound of him rushing up to me and then felt a blow across the right side of my face. It knocked my head back into the wall that I was pinned to. “Dead,” he finished, dealing another blow to the same side of my face, sending more of the black ooze trickling down into my face.
“It was all going fine,” he continued. “Lori was going to come around.” His voice sounded like this was more a desire than it was a truth. “Sure, she was sad. I knew she was going to be that way when I came back. But she knows she has me. She just couldn’t give you up. And you were gone. You were supposed to be there, but you were gone. I had it all worked out. Everyone would have known it wasn’t my fault. But then you were gone.”
I heard him slump down in the chair across the room. I looked up at him. He looked sad, broken. Sweat was pouring down his face. He wiped some away and rubbed the back of his shaved head.
“You were supposed to be there. You were supposed to be dead. But then you weren’t there, and they went after you. And then the herd hit. They were like an army, man. They were coming from every direction. I grabbed Lori, but couldn’t find Carl. And she wouldn’t leave without Carl. I wouldn’t have left without him, either. Not really. There were just so many and I didn’t know what to do.”
“And then we found the others. When I saw Carl with them, I was so happy. But he was different. He wouldn’t talk to me, or her. When we got somewhere safe, no one wanted to leave you behind. They all wanted to go back and find you. I wanted to scream at them, HE IS DEAD, YOU IDIOTS! I KILLED HIM! But they kept looking. And when they didn’t find you, Lori was different. She and Carl, man, they both just got quiet. So, I thought coming home would help them move on.”
“But then Carl ran away, and… and,” he began to sob and reached his left hand up to his head, rubbing his temple. His right hand came up, but it held a shiny black object. It took a second for my brain to register what the object was, but then the word came back to my mind- gun.
“And then we found Carl. And then we found you! And now, now she blames me for the whole thing.”
“I’ve lost her. But I can get her back. I just have to make sure that you,” he stood up from the chair and ran over to me, quick as a bolt of lightning. I closed my eyes and looked away. “Go away and DON’T COME BACK AGAIN GOD DAM…”
The words were cut off by a loud bang and then red covered everything around me. For a second, I thought I was dying again. I heard the sound of something large hitting the ground. I kept my eyes closed for a moment. When I realized I was, in fact, still there, I opened them and saw the tan man slumped on the ground before me.
I looked up and saw the long haired woman standing in the doorway, her arms held outward and a gun smoking in her clenched hands. Her eyes were glued to the man she had killed. Tears streamed down her cheeks and her mouth was clenched in a grimace of pure hate. She walked forward.
She approached the body without even glancing at me. She breathed deeply, and then spat on him. She stood for a moment more, a pleased smile spread across her face for a second. It quickly disappeared as she looked up at me. Tears began to flow even stronger.
“I’m so sorry, Rick. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. First, you were dead, but then you came back to me. Now, you are back again.” She took a deep breath and then continued. “But I can’t be with you. Or Carl. You have to take care of him. I will take care of this baby for both of us, and I will make sure he knows about both you and Carl.”
Right then, a thudding sound erupted from the basement door. She looked toward it and then spoke again. “Dale says you are different. That you are a walker, but… Different. Is that true?” she asked.
I tried to speak. I opened my mouth, but even though I could now understand what she was saying to me, or at least most of it, I didn’t know how I could make myself do the same thing. A pathetic clicking and gasping sound was all I managed to get out of my mouth. I looked away in shame.
“Oh, Rick. I’m so sorry.” She stopped for a second and waited for me to look back up at her. “I wish I could stay with you. I promise I will come back one day.”
She put both hands around the tool pinning me to the wall and pulled back. I slumped forward a bit, but managed to push my head and shoulders back enough that I ended up sitting on the floor as my body slid down the wall. She knelt in front of me. Then she leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek. She quickly stood back up.
Right at that moment, the body beside me started to twitch and shake. It’s hand shot forward and grabbed onto her ankle. She shoved it off, stepped back, and then unloaded a shot directly into the back of its head. Blood seeped forward and pooled on the floor in the shape of a tornado. She put the gun away, and then walked out the door. She stopped once she was outside.
“Goodbye,” she said. I heard a car engine fire up and then drive away. I had never felt alone since I had become myself again, but the emotion hit me like a speeding train once the sound of the car faded in the distance. For a moment, there was only silence, and then the banging filled the air again. I looked toward the basement door, and then stood.
The Resurrection: Part 6
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I found it impossible to settle into my new loneliness. Before, I had been driven by a deep-seeded compulsion and watched myself from a distance, like I was living a bad drive-in movie. Now, I was more in control, but also completely aimless. The drive to feed had all but left me, as did the need to keep up the routine of walking the route to and from the zoo. I took to exploring my little town. First, I went from house to house in my neighborhood. It was a funny feeling, because before they had all seemed a little less real. It was like they had just sprung into existence, but had been only set pieces before. Most lay empty, bereft of life except for small rodents and bugs.
They all told the same story about people. Some that quickly packed and left, and then the squatters and raiders that followed. One house felt more familiar than the rest. The windows had been boarded up and a mattress strewn the floor of the living room. Bullets lay spent on the floor next to the upstairs window and bodies covered the ground in front of the house. I tried to search my mind for the connection I had to this place, but there was just static in that part of my mind, like a radio set to dead air. After more fruitless searching, I continued exploring.
While walking in a darkened alley behind a small, dilapidated theater, I spotted a hunched form in the distance. My first reaction was to throw my body against the wall and hide behind some nearby trash bins, which made a clatter as I accidentally knocked one over. I leaned out to see if it had heard and if it was still there, and saw it lumbering down the alley towards me. I could tell almost immediately that something wasn’t right with it. It seemed to favor its left side. Its left foot was dragging at an odd angle and its head bobbed drunkenly on that side also. Its long hair shot in all directions on the right side, but was matted and pressed firm to the scalp like it was wet on the left.
I was so absorbed in watching it that I had forgotten my fear. It only returned when the form was on me. I slunk back into the nook behind the bins and slid down the brick wall. And then it was in front of me. It began grabbing at the bins, kicking them both over and scattering refuse all over the alley. It didn’t even stop to look at me until my leg jerked when its hand nearly touched it as it blindly searched through the clutter. When I moved, it stopped to look at me.
It seemed to think I was nothing worth bothering with and it continued to search for whatever it thought was near. Frozen, I looked at every inch of this horrible creature. I could tell now that it was, or at least used to be, a woman. She must have been old even before she became what she was, but now her skin was not only wrinkled, but also starting to slough off her in little tabs of green and grey. She had trouble moving and her head bobbed because she had been hit by something large that had ripped through her, nearly tearing her in two from the neck to her waist. Her left shoulder to her belly was split in a sideways slash and barely hanging on by gristle and black meat, like a car door had ripped its way through her. Her jaw was also split from the left side of her face by her ear. The white bone of it stuck out like a swinging door. Her left eye was mashed and hung out of the socket, drooping lower than her nose. The right side of her face, however, looked almost untouched, other than the discolored skin.
I looked down at my hand and traced the crescent-shaped wound on it. I looked at the skin of my arm. The color was not at all the same as the people I had seen, but it wasn’t like this creature’s either. My skin still had the extreme white tint it did after I resurfaced from my watery hiding spot days before. It was also still more plum than it was before, but it didn’t feel like it would slough off at the slightest touch anymore. It felt more substantial than it had those days or weeks before, like something was returning to it that had fled once.
I looked back up at her and saw something familiar. She was me from before. The beast had her. She was running on instinct and I saw no evidence that she was hiding at the back of her mind like I had for so long. Of course, I didn’t know if I could tell if it was or was there- that spark that had awakened me.
I stood up. She continued on as if I were not there at all. I walked in front of her, but she just moved another direction and continued to forage through the refuse. She then moved away and back towards where I had first seen her. I followed her farther down the alley. There were no sounds except the stuttering and dragging scrapes of her lumbering walk.
When she arrived back where she was earlier, she stooped and picked up a grey and red mass, and then took a bite. I watched as her teeth tore into the soft flesh, ripping a kite-shaped chuck out of it and then chewing. Red trickled down her chin and small bits escaped the tear on her jaw, falling slowly down to her shoulder and then sliding back to the ground.
Just then a clattering bang erupted from the end of the alley. A black cat emerged from behind a wooden palate that was leaned awkwardly against the brick wall. The cat sauntered down the alley like it owned the place, but then arched its back and began to hiss when the woman began to stand up again.
She started towards the cat with her foot slowing her attempted run to more of a fast shuffle. She got about ten feet from it when the cat ran right by her, jumped up on the trash cans I had hidden behind, then up a set of emergency stairs that were halfway lowered to the ground. Its tail disappeared behind the last step as the cat jumped up to the roof.
The sad form chased after the cat long after it had disappeared. I watched it claw at the wall, too dumb to know its prey was long gone. I walked closer and looked into its eyes. It never stopped to acknowledge me in any way. It was vacant.
The beast had her, and something in me told me that she was too far gone to ever become like me again. I stared at her for a long time, trying to figure out what made me different from her. She was a broken thing, but I was a broken thing too. The extent of damage was much worse for her, however. I thought that maybe that was the difference, but then I looked at her face again, with its awful, protruding bone. I suddenly became intensely frightened that I was the same as her. The realization that I had no face, or at least did not know it, hit me like a blow. I ran back home, my feet not slowing down at all even though they still had no shoes to protect them from the rough concrete. A path of wet, black footprints trailed behind me with every step.
Frank M. Anderson's Writing 
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