Something was bothering Terry. Perhaps it was the stress of working the midnight shift at Wal-Mart, the nagging of his girlfriend to stop trying to install an in-ground pool by himself in his mother’s backyard, or the metaphysical questions and dilemmas that he faced at every waking moment of every single day. Or maybe it was the zombies.
You see, the zombies had started out as somewhat of a nuisance to Terry. You know, they’d overrun his favorite bar and turn all of his friends into the walking undead, the whole situation would lead to news updates that would interrupt his favorite television shows, and one would wander out into the road and cause a massive pileup during rush hour that would turn the freeway into a parking lot and make Terry late for dinner with his girlfriend. They were bothersome and unnecessary, at first at least. Then they became even more annoying and even inconvenient to Terry and everyone that Terry knew. They would overrun the local hospital and kill all of the doctors and nurses, overrun the pet store right before Terry’s girlfriend’s birthday (which Terry had promised to get her a new puppy for), and murder Terry’s father. Worst of all, it seemed to Terry that this problem was going to get a lot worse before it got any better. The government was hardly helping at all. The most they had done was hand out brochures saying “FIGHT ZOMBIES! BUY WAR BONDS!” to unsuspecting citizens who entered post offices.
“Our tax dollars at work,” spat Terry angrily as he angrily threw the pamphlet away in a fit of angriliness.
As Terry was buying war bonds (as a present for his girlfriend’s birthday) the next day, he realized that the world probably didn’t have much time left. News polls were indicating that nearly 47% of all citizens in the tri-county area’s favorite food was “braaaaaains…”, with “pizza” in a close second. While Terry was never one to dismiss something before trying it for himself, something told him that those who responded with “braaaaaaains…” probably were zombies. Very few living people enjoyed brains. Unless Terry’s brother-in-law, who was currently in a maximum security prison somewhere in Wyoming, was polled somehow. He used to rave about how delicious human brains were, especially at family gatherings at incredibly inappropriate moments, which in turn became more awkward than they already were.
“We just found out Aunt Joanna has a brain tumor,” said Uncle Jesse sullenly.
“Oh, brains are my favorite!” replied Jeffrey.
Awkward silence! responded everyone in the room for the next ten minutes.
But Jeffrey was fairly unique in his tastes, so Terry assumed that at least 50% of the 47% had probably already fallen under the colorful influence of the zombie philosophy. As Terry searched hopelessly for a calculator to figure out how much that was (and to type “80085” for a good laugh), he remembered that he had left his calculator at his mother’s house last year when he had forced her to do his taxes for him, despite the fact that he had saved no receipts through the year and had several discrepancies between his claims of being a war veteran and the reality that he was never a veteran and had spelled “veteran” incorrectly on the tax form. Well, Terry supposed that those polls were sometimes inaccurate anyhow, and if he really wanted to figure it out, he could always try to figure out how to use that abacus Grandpa Stuart had given him when he was six.
“My grandpa gave me one of these when I was six!” exclaimed Grandpa Stuart.
“What is it?”
“Oh, it’s like a calculator, only it’s not nearly as simple or helpful. And it’s haunted!”
Grandpa Stuart, like Jeffrey, tended to be avoided as often as possible at all family gatherings. And inputting “80085” into an abacus wasn’t nearly as hilarious as it was with a calculator. Terry tried to put the zombies out of his mind and think of more pleasant things. He was going to dinner with his girlfriend, Giselle, later that night. Giselle was a wonderful girl of 27 who had been planning on breaking up with Terry before the zombies struck and destroyed her favorite bar where she would flirt with guys. After that sad event, she figured she might as well stay with Terry until the zombies killed them. It was her birthday in a few weeks, she figured at the time, and it was nice having a boyfriend for your birthday so you can get some nice present before zombies kill you.
Unfortunately for Giselle, Terry was planning on giving her a worse gift for her birthday (war bonds) than the one she had received for Valentine’s Day (bail bonds). She had asked him repeatedly in the past few weeks to get her a Scottish terrier puppy, which Terry had put off until the day after the zombies really kicked their invasion into high-gear. At that point, any pet shop you could find had been taken over by the brain-craving undead armies of the night, who were unreliable in their abilities to continue feeding the animals. They were, however, incredibly reliable in their ability to eat the animals, or at least maim them until they died. Most pet shops were incredibly depressing places in the post-zombie apocalyptic world. Terry had managed to find one pet shop, way on the outskirts of town, that had been spared of zombie mayhem, but they had just sold their last Scottish terrier. But he had heard the words “WAR BONDS!” somewhere in the past few days, so decided that Giselle would want nothing more than wonderful, wonderful war bonds. Once Terry found out what “war bonds” were, he was less sure of how much Giselle would enjoy them.
“Oh well, zombies are gonna kill us soon. No point in worrying over a triviality like a birthday present,” mumbled Terry to himself while on the phone with Giselle.
“I really wish you would stop talking about how the zombies are going to kill us soon, Terence,” replied Giselle, upset. “And you had better worry about my birthday present!” she shouted as she hung up the phone.
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