Chapter 1
Signs
Recorded Interview
Subject: Steven Woods
DOB: 04 May 1996
Record Date: 17 Mar 2018
TALK INTO HERE?
Oh... sorry. Don't touch it, talk normal, got it.
Just start talking? OK.
It was a dark and stormy night...
I'm just fucking with ya', I just always wanted to say that.
Truth be told I don't know when it actually started but I do know when it started for me and I sure as shit know when my life became one steaming pile of fuckeduppedness.
That day's burnt into my brain like a saltwater sunburn, all itchy and pestering. Thinking about it just reminds you of how much it hurts. You can twist and turn, trying to escape the pain, but that just makes new patches of raw, burnt flesh feel like they're gunna peel off. You just have to sit there soaking in your own misery and hope the pain'll go away... 'course it never does.
Nowadays I can go a whole day, two sometimes if I don't go outside, without thinking about it. But back then, in the beginning? I mean after it was all over? I couldn't go even a few hours without it popping right the fuck into the middle of every gods damned thought. Like if someone says to you, "Don't think of an elephant!" First thing your thinking of? Motherfucking elephant.
Sorry, what was I saying? Oh, yeah. Day's burnt into my brain...
I guess that's about right 'cause I remember the weatherman saying it was the hottest day in recorded history, something about global climate change, but Daddy was even hotter. He was taking me and my little brother to the K-Mart in Crystal Springs, that's where the nuclear plant used to be, instead of enjoying a nice cool beer on his only day off. Instead of sluggin' a few cold ones back he was taking us to buy the cheapest cloths possible 'cause Marshall, that's my little brother, everybody just called him M, well M thought in his idiot little ten year old head it would be funny to pour bleach into the washing machine while Momma was doing the wash.
I know it seems like a really stupid thing to do, pouring bleach into the laundry as a "joke," and it was given the consequences, but you gotta understand we were always playing pranks on each other back then.
Like the time Dad put the shrimp in my pillowcase that ended up making my room stink like rotten coocie. Only thing I smelled worse than that was when I was working for my California citizenship and we ran all them zombies into the ocean. I don't know what the hell the dumbasses was thinking though cause they just kind of floated there baking and rotting in the sun and shit till we had to evacuate the whole damn town and have the militia drag 'em out and burn 'em. That shrimp was almost as bad smelling as that. It stunk up my room so bad Momma made Daddy buy me new sheets and a whole bunch of them jelly air fresheners.
Don't get me wrong, Momma wasn't mad about the shrimp prank, hell she was one of the biggest prankers in or family of fucked up prankers. She was just a lot smarter and a lot more patient laying the trap. Like this one time she went on for a whole week about how she wanted us to go vegan and she was going to start cooking healthy vegetarian shit for us. She goes out and buys these expensive tofu burgers or bean burgers or some shit and feeds 'em to us. They were the worst damn things I'd ever tasted and as we're trying to choke the things down she just busts out laughing. She'd ground up some cardboard and mixed in all our burgers 'cept hers. She was an evil bitch, funny but evil.
We liked those kinds of pranks though, that shit was funny, but M just wasn't any good at it. Being the youngest he just didn't have any hope of pulling a fast one on us and he didn't quite get the whole concept of doing something sneaky.
I guess when he saw me bleaching the green out of my lawn mowing jeans he thought of the bright idea that bleaching all our clothes would be hi-fucking-larious. He was asses and elbows deep into his dumb ass plan, dumping the last half of a whole damn gallon of bleach into a second load of clothes, when Momma caught him redhanded.
Gods damn was she pissed. I never heard Momma cuss in front of us on purpose before, shit she never even took the Lord's name in vain to my recollection, but I tell you I heard some words that day that would make a half rotten zombie whore blush. I'm not even talking about the ones the slavers drag behind their caravans to advertise their real whores, I mean the ones they make you fuck before you can become an apprentice. The ones with the maggots dripping out of their eye sockets... and their other sockets.
To this day I still don't know what some of them words Momma said mean, and back then little M sure as shit didn't know, but I don't think he had any problem translating the basic concepts as Momma tore him a new asshole. I swear I think she might have broken her hand if I didn't pull her offa him.
What had to be worse for M though was thinking about the beating that was still to come. The beating he knew he'd get when when Daddy got home and found out M had picked the two worst possible loads to fuck up; our brand new school clothes.
The clothes Daddy had spent his yearly bonus on instead of buying the new flatscreen TV he'd been drooling over for the past year. The shiny black fifty two inch widescreen trinket that would forever be out of his reach because Momma said he wasn't buying any fancy flat anything so long as his only begotten sons were walking this earth like godless heathens in tattered rags. Funny, I'd kill for clothes in that nice a condition today, literally.
Yeah, so Daddy was driving me and M to the K-Mart and cursing as loud as a man could possibly curse while still technically doing it under his breath. Almost as pissed for having my Saturday ruined I was sitting in the back beside M putting into place just one of the many tortures I had envisioned as retribution for my asshole little brother's fucked up prank. M was gazing out of his window and sulking while shitty music blared from his earbuds, probably that Emo crap, so he was much too preoccupied to notice me depositing a freshly extracted nose nugget on the crisp collar of his Sunday-go-to-meeting suit. Momma made him wear that as an added punishment.
Glancing out M's window I saw it for the first time. I just kind of chuckled to myself thinking it was a prank. It was one of those orange construction/roadwork signs that demanded your attention while simultaneously making itself impossible to read by blinking and rotating its text. People used to fuck with those signs all the time so I figured it was just more of the same.
For years afterward, and even a little bit today I guess, I'll torture myself thinking that if I had just pointed that sign out to Daddy maybe M might still be alive today. Maybe we wouldn't have to watch Momma be dragged behind a cart wearing nothing but a filthy pink teddybear nighty whenever the slavers came though town selling their wares.
But how the hell could I possibly have known? Even if I had said something to Dad he would have thought, just like I did, that it was just some kids playing a prank. Right?
I didn't think a thing about that sign till we was hauling ass back the other way and I was wishing the fuck I'd payed more attention...
The sign was flashing, "ZOMBIE ATTACK EVACUATE!"
