End of the World Afterparty: Part Eight

For End of the World Afterparty: Part One, click here. 

For End of the World Afterparty: Part Seven, click here. 

 

INTERLUDE TWO

There was another game I used to play almost every day during a particularly turbulent summer. This one had zombies in it, too, although they weren’t the main focus; the main focus was learning. You played through the eyes of a high school student—you, sitting at your laptop, pulled into the scene. Everyone else in the school was a zombie, including the teacher, but they posed no great threat at first. I say “no great threat” because they were chained to their desks, biting only air. 

Believe it or not, this one was a typing instructor. It opened with a tutorial consisting of several introductory levels that taught you which fingers were supposed to hit which keys—how to reach for P, for instance; how to find the semi-colon; how to do it with ten fingers instead of two. After that, you progressed to several blocks of text, increasing in difficulty, which you had to type out in order to incorporate all the various steps. 

At first I was painfully slow, but there was nothing to stress about. The goal was to finish each assignment in a set amount of time, with a certain level of accuracy, or else a link would be added to each zombie’s chain. It didn’t matter if you lost several levels, even ten or upwards of fifteen. The zombies were so far away from you in the beginning, it almost didn’t register that their chains were lengthening, that they were starting to leave their desks and creep towards you, always straining for the taste of your flesh. You saw the chains, and you still thought safety. 

With perfect speed and accuracy, you could start to shorten the chains again. A level completed without mistakes could earn you back one link, but everything was cumulative as the story progressed, and after a certain point, you started to realize it wasn’t a game anymore, that you actually felt like you were fighting for your life. The only thing that could save you from the approaching doom was to type faster and better, as, in this strange windswept classroom, the zombie children in their torn and dusty uniforms drew nearer to you, the teacher hard on their heels. 

The detail that I got hung up on, in the early stages, was not the zombies but rather the section of wall to the side of the classroom that had been blown away by some past explosion. It gave the general impression that everything was in ruins, that the world as I had come to know it was completely destroyed. Of course, I understood that the game was fictitious and that the setting was meant as a way to energize an otherwise boring lesson, but operating inside the chosen premise, I could never figure out the point of learning to type if I was the sole survivor of some world-ending disaster. The apocalypse, after all, probably doesn’t need secretaries or writers, and being able to sustain ninety words per minute doesn’t mean much in the face of nuclear fall-out. 

Periodically, I’d reach the point where the building pressure became too much for me, and I’d need to pause the game and lock myself in the darkened confines of my closet until the universe grew small and manageable again. Each time it took me longer and longer to come down from that, to remember—to actually remember—that it was only a game. To feel myself in the physical world, safe and at ease. To realize that I hadn’t been, even for a moment, trapped in that room. I’d had to tell myself over and over that the zombies weren’t real, that they wouldn’t be waiting in the dark when I climbed into bed, but something deep in my hindbrain never understood that lesson. It saw a vision of a future no words could ever reason away. It treated the ideas of the game’s producers as a form of prophecy.  

The more nervous I got, the faster I typed, and as a result my accuracy suffered. Eventually, when only a few chain links separated me from a horrible death, I shut off the game and never switched it back on. I was too scared to find out what sort of end had been programmed for me if I lost. Some dark, hidden truth in the game promised to reach out through the screen and into my waking world. 

Several times, in the following years, I considered resuming where I’d left off or maybe restarting the game entirely, now that I had a better idea of what I was doing, but I was always too afraid. I always kept expecting to feel the teeth, to look down at my arms as I typed and see actual bite marks—red, open wounds. It felt like the game had only been written with failure in mind, although it’s possible that I was just a sore loser; I tended to take stuff too personally; there were other things going on in my life at the time. In retrospect, I wish I’d gone back and tested those waters, just to have that one mystery resolved, to free myself from the sword of Damocles hanging over my head, even if the end was as unkind as I’d imagined it. 

The upside of playing that game is that now I type like the world is ending. 

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I must have drifted off to sleep, because when I woke, it was dark and Mr. President was chewing on my leg. At first I thought it had to be some kind of sick game, but there was just enough ambient light coming from the various electronics in the garage to see that Mr. President had bitten down so hard on my shin guards that several of his teeth had broken off. And the clicking noises coming from deep in his throat were too unsettling and distinct to be anything but real. 

With the adrenaline, came a sense of clarity. My hands might be zip-tied, but my feet were still free, and if I could stand, I could run away. Without weapons, that was about the best I could do, unless I wanted to scream for help and risk letting Mr. President attack my face or some other unprotected part. 

It seemed obvious what had happened, that the contact he’d allowed himself to share with the zombie corpse before we took it outside had been enough to give the fungus a foothold in his system. At some point in the night, it had reached its tipping point. Now we were reaping the consequences. I was only surprised this reckoning hadn’t come sooner. 

As I considered my options, half frozen with fear, he started gnawing on my other shin. That one was protected, too, but the rest of my legs weren’t, and aside from the tactical vest, all my juicy parts were exposed. It was a matter of time before he moved onto something easier to chew. Even so, a part of me was hypnotized by the sight, unable to look away. 

What about the others? Had he gotten to them first? I could be the last one left. If I called for help, would they come to save me or to join the feast? Realistically, I could expect one chance to scramble to my feet and escape. If I fell, I doubted I’d have the opportunity to get back up. 

Mr. President, though stocky, was relatively unimposing. Talking excitedly had been enough to make him short of breath, and he had the flabby look of someone who maintained a sedentary lifestyle. But now I pictured him moving at unnatural speeds. Some active corner of my recall reminded me of a clip I’d seen on a TV show, or maybe a Youtube video, where a man had explained that with the natural restraints removed from your psyche, you could tear open a ribcage as easily as you would a bag of potato chips, that we always have more strength in our muscles than we know how to access and that the thinking parts of our brains are all that cripple us. Just like that old claim that you could bite through your finger as easily as a carrot if you could just get your mind to let go of the consequences. Maybe none of it was true, and Mr. President was no more dangerous in death than he had been in life, but I doubted it. 

I understood on some level that I was disassociating, that no one watches a zombie trying to eat them and thinks about scientific facts unless they’ve already given up. But I didn’t know how to shake myself from the same paralysis that had taken me on our way to the garage. I didn’t know how to recapture the bravado that had bolstered me when I went outside to get the car keys; for that, I’d have to be angry. 

Just get up, I told myself. Just stand. My quads were strong from skateboarding and rollerblading. Even with my arms tied behind my back, it wouldn’t be that difficult. But every time my brain sent the signals to my legs, they didn’t respond. I could feel them, could feel Mr. President’s teeth tugging and worrying at the shin guards, I just couldn’t get them to do my bidding. 

The thought of being zombified and tearing Jason limb from limb did have its appeal, but I wanted to see my mom again. I wanted to make sure she was okay. And more, I wanted to live, even if it meant going home and scrolling through conspiracy reels on TikTok endlessly, doing nothing but rotting away in the comfort of my own bed. No bright visions of my future graced me as I sat there in the throes of my near death experience. I made no promises to God that I would become the next Mother Theresa if I survived. People say that moments like these strip you down to your bare essence and reveal who you really are, and after that you never go back to the person you were before. I already knew who I was, and I wanted to keep being that person right up until I died of old age. 

The chewing seemed to last forever, every nanosecond becoming an hour as I watched Mr. President persist, convinced that if he could just get through the hard shell of the guards, there would be meat in abundance for him to consume. For a while, I considered kicking him directly in the face, putting all my weight behind the attack, and just seeing what happened. Maybe I could throw him off me long enough to stand and get away. But I couldn’t get my brain over that first hurdle, couldn’t lift my leg, couldn’t shake the image of my foot ending up in his mouth, torn to the bone by the jagged remnants of his teeth. 

My character is lagging, I thought. The controller is responding slowly, or else the game is buffering. If I pull the plug now, I can return to my last saved point and pick up from there. It all seemed so real, so plausible in that moment. Looking at myself like an avatar on screen gave me enough of a cold, clinical remove to get my bearings. What I did in the moment didn’t matter, because I could just respawn. It was easy. I’d played enough scenarios like this that of course I knew what I was doing. 

Gritting my teeth, I retracted my free leg slowly as I ran the sequence of events through my head one more time, how hard I would kick, where Mr. President would fall, what I would do once I was mobile. Several details depended on variables I couldn’t control or predict, like how fast he could run, and what the others would do once I woke them, if I chose to wake them. But I would have to figure those parts out on the fly. 

Okay, it’s time now. I’m going to do it. I am doing it. 

I didn’t get the chance. Before I could launch my foot at Mr. President, his face burst apart in a cold spray, showering me with thick, dark blood and brain matter. The sound of the gunshot threatened to collapse my own skull, an overpowering thunder echoing through the enclosed space like cannon fire. For half a second, I thought the world was ending, and when I came back to myself, Mr. President was draped limply across my legs like a supplicant. Calling him dead would have been redundant. 

With my hands constrained, there was no way to wipe away the blood. All I could picture were the fungal spores burrowing through my skin, slipping past the mucous membranes in my eyes and nose, seeking shelter there, growing strong. 

All at once the lights flicked on, blinding in their sudden, stark brightness. Around me, everyone looked like washed-out shadows, pale corpses in their own right. But then, slowly, my vision adjusted to the change, and I saw Jason, shotgun balanced on his hip like a beloved child, grinning from ear to ear. “That’s the fourth time I’ve saved your life,” he said. “I would understand if you wanted to get down on your knees for me.” 

That’s when I threw up, thick strands of vomit and saliva forcing their way out of my mouth like the stalks of the cordyceps as my vision began closing in around the edges. 

Dimly, I could hear Alana yelling that Mr. President had turned, as if she’d been the first of us to notice. Her voice rose to a thin, shrill cry, insisting that she had known this was going to happen, that she’d warned us, that even now none of us were safe because the sickness could be lying dormant in our bodies. “You have to kill me before I change,” she screamed, waving her arms in a drunken semaphore. “I can feel it happening to me. It’s worse, now, because I have his blood on me.” 

She didn’t. From where I sat, it was abundantly clear she hadn’t been anywhere close enough, and I wanted to yell that it was me wearing his blood—me, you crazy bitch—but I was too afraid to open my mouth again, too afraid that when I did I would taste pennies and rot past the burn of stomach acid. 

Out of nowhere, Ann appeared with a wet cloth and began to wipe my face, making cooing noises under her breath as Alana’s screams reached a fever pitch, a frantic glossolalia. “There there,” Ann whispered. “There there. You’re okay.” It was the nicest anyone in this group had ever been to me, and all of a sudden I could feel deep, animal sobs building up inside my chest, climbing over each other in an effort to escape. 

From somewhere off to the side, I could hear Ian saying, “He must have lied about not getting the flu shot. It must move more slowly through some people. There’s no other explanation.” 

Setting the record straight felt hopeless. We’d all seen Mr. President with the dead girl; if no one else came to the correct conclusion, it didn’t matter anyway, not sitting here on the other side of things. All it did was make me feel like that guy in the Poe story, visiting an asylum run by lunatics, discovering that the balance had shifted irreversibly. 

Still, I managed to recapture enough of my composure to fix Jason with a baleful stare. “This has gone on long enough. You need to cut me loose. If I’d been turned, you would have had two zombies munching on you in the dark. Think about that.” 

He smirked. “I wouldn’t mind you munching on me.” 

“For the love of God, can you please take this situation seriously?” I screamed, wondering why I was even bothering at this point. Jason was the type of person who made you consider that “trap, neuter, release” should apply to humans, too. 

“Nothing bad would have happened to us,” Ian snapped, hands raised as if to ward off a blow. Those words, they were his last defense against the fear that would eat him alive before the zombies ever had a chance to sink their teeth into his flesh; I could feel it. 

Just then, Mr. President lurched upright, and I shrieked in surprise before I could stop myself. Half of his face had been blown off by the shot, bits of his brain flung against the wall like chunks of tofu, but there must still have been enough viable sections of his nervous system left. He jerked about like a badly-controlled marionette, his remaining eye rolling around wildly. The other socket was empty, a black expanse, wet and gleaming. With no bottom jaw left to speak of, there wasn’t much chance he could bite me, but I felt myself teetering on the edge of panic nonetheless. 

When Ian leveled his gun, Jason put a hand on his arm and said, “No, don’t shoot him. I have a better idea.” His expression told me all I needed to know about what that would mean for the rest of us. 

For a moment he disappeared, slipping into the other room. By the time he returned carrying a length of chain, Alana had lapsed into an exhausted silence, half slumped against the wall like a fainting heroine in an old, sexist movie, the back of her hand pressed to her forehead in a dramatic flourish no one bothered to acknowledge. 

“What the hell are you doing?” I demanded as Jason drew near, but he just ignored me, that knowing smile still plastered across his face. 

The rest of us watched in concerned silence while he wrapped the chain around Mr. President’s loose bulk and fastened it in place. The whole time, the dead man moved like a sleeping animal in the throes of a nightmare, thrashing vaguely. Part of me felt sorry for him, but only part.  

“I’ll remove the zip ties if you help me with this next bit,” Jason said. 

“And what is that?” I felt a sudden apprehension. His grin told me this was not an offer of freedom.  

Again he stood and crossed the room without a word, this time returning with a forty-five pound plate from the rack of weights. As he fastened it to the other end of the chain, leaving a three foot length between that and where the line was attached to Mr. President, I started to develop a picture of what he was imagining. I just couldn’t figure out why it would be something he wanted. 

“You’re going to help me get him into the pool,” he said finally. “I could do it by myself easily enough.” He flexed as if to prove his point, and then Alana really did faint. “But I want this to be a learning experience for you. I think you need to get a little more hands-on with our team building exercises, if you know what I mean. It’s that, or you stay here until you give me some other incentive to let you go.” He winked then. Every time he winked, it looked like a bee had just flown directly into his eye. 

“Why do you want to put a zombie in your pool?” I asked, keeping my expression neutral. I already knew what I was going to say. Remaining tied up wasn’t an option, though enabling Jason’s insanity felt worse. 

“Because I think it’ll be fun, and I’m bored,” Jason said, pulling out a pocket knife and crouching over me. “So what’s it going to be?” 

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“Okay, I’ll help,” I said. 

For a moment, an almost petulant look crossed Jason’s face, as if he’d been hoping for a different answer. The knife sat inches from me, and I pictured him stabbing me on impulse, right in the throat or maybe the eye. Instead he grabbed the tactical vest with his free hand and yanked me to my feet so fast I got vertigo. Once he’d cut through the zip ties, he spun me around and slammed me against the wall like an overeager cop on a traffic stop. That was Jason, always going for a spectacle. 

I tried to turn around, but his hand was on my shoulder, pinning me in place. “One more thing before I let you go,” he said, low enough that I doubted anyone else would hear. “I’ve given you a lot of leeway, because you’ve got spunk and I enjoy that, but the next time you act up, next time you even try to leave, we’re going to go in the other room, you and I, and I’m going to prove a point. Understand?” His voice had gone throaty and breathless. 

Remember what I said about Jason having a criminal record? I wanted to be brave in that moment, to spit back something snarky and biting, to show him I wasn’t afraid. But I was. Worse, I felt humiliated. His presence sat in my psyche like a malignant tumor. 

“Your heart is racing. You like that?” he whispered in my ear, breath hot and rank. “I hear girls like that.” One of his hands slid down, fingers probing the waistband of my cargo pants. Any second now, I was going to step sideways out of my mind. 

“Uh, Jason, you’re being kind of creepy,” Ian called from somewhere across the room, sounding a little too hesitant and submissive for my taste. I wanted him to rip Jason off me and drown him in the pool or else beat him until he was nothing more than pulp. I wanted Ian to at least sound like he was convinced that stepping in was the right thing to do. 

But finally Jason pulled away, so at least there was that. I guess it was better than nothing. I’ve met a lot of men who wouldn’t have said anything at all, who would have told themselves they wouldn’t have let it get that far, even as they watched it go further. Or else they would have congratulated Jason, given him that knowing look I’ve seen guys share when they don’t think women are looking. Still, it shakes your faith in humanity, knowing someone had to weigh the pros and cons before saving you. 

After that, getting Mr. President into the pool took all my willpower. With the adrenaline still coursing through my body, my arms jumped and spasmed like they were glitching, and I felt the outline of a scream lodged in my throat. The whole time Jason watched me with that same dark laughter in his eyes, and when Mr. President finally landed in the water with a disconcerting splash, followed by the forty-five pound plate to keep him anchored, I saw something like my future on the dark, red tiles at the bottom as the dead lecher twisted and thrashed. I wondered if he would drown, if the cordyceps couldn’t maintain itself without oxygen, or if he would remain down there, active and rotting as he stared up at a world he could no longer visit. What could Jason possibly hope to accomplish by doing this? What sick, twisted visions drove him? I doubted there would be any pool cleaners on call, if he changed his mind. 

“Remember what we talked about,” Jason whispered as he passed by me on his way to the bathroom. When he finally closed the door behind him, I released a breath that sounded like a sob and considered my options. I needed to eat. I needed to drink water. I needed to drown myself in alcohol until nothing mattered anymore. 

More importantly, I needed to get out of here, and for a moment I considered making a run for it while Jason was occupied. Maybe it wouldn’t be worth the trouble of going after me. But then I turned to survey the room and found Ian watching closely, eyes narrowed like he couldn’t quite figure out whose side he was on. “You shouldn’t antagonize Jason like that,” he said, as I rifled through the MREs until I found something vaguely appealing. Tuna on crackers. I thought maybe my stomach would be able to handle that. 

Part of me considered trying to set Ian straight, but I knew there’d be no point. Whatever narrative he’d seen playing out, he’d already written the necessary script for both sides. If he couldn’t use his own eyeballs to suss out the situation correctly, my additions weren’t going to change anything. I suppose thanking him for his contributions might have helped to smooth over our tenuous diplomatic relations, but somehow that felt even more humiliating than what had come before. Throwing myself at Ian’s feet for protection wouldn’t work in the long run. If I was going to get myself out of here, I knew it would have to be under my own power. Next time something like this happened, I got the feeling Ian was going to turn a blind eye, or else join in. He had that look on his face, like he was already rethinking what he’d witnessed, justifying Jason’s actions in the aftermath, thinking about what he would have done in Jason’s shoes. 

Maybe I’m not being fair. They say perception is reality. So it’s possible he felt bad for me, concerned even, and what he’d been going for was a sympathetic look that I took entirely the wrong way. Maybe my own actions were what alienated him and not some made-up scenario in his head. But I didn’t feel like being fair to him in the moment, and I certainly don’t feel like being fair to him now. 

I can see some of you in the comments section, somewhere in the future, saying, “Wow, she seems like an ungrateful witch, real frigid and mean. Ian should have let Jason hurt her. Saving females only gets you in trouble.” Or worse: “Females deserve what they get because of feminism.” 

Well, can it—I hate that you’re in my head. I was there, and you weren’t, so I don’t want to hear it. Meeting the bare minimum one time doesn’t make him a goddamn hero; it just makes everything else he did all that much worse. He saw what was coming down the line and still kept me trapped there—think about that. 

…

…

Man, had to stop for a drink there, but I’m back now. I could already see what Federalslippers293 would have said if this were a livestream, and it made me see red. I could argue with the red pilled, terminally online bros all day, but they will never see me as a human; they’ve curated their Instagram feeds too carefully for that. 

Anyway, I digress. 

As I sat, struggling to swallow mouthfuls of tuna and crackers, I heard the sound of a blender whirring and looked up to see Ann in the kitchenette, assembling a concerning assortment of ingredients into what could only generously be called a smoothie. She poured her creation into a glass and padded over to me. “Here, I made you this,” she said softly, and again, that gentleness in her voice was enough to make me want to cry. Looking at her, I thought, I want to get her out of here, too, even if she is wrong in the head. 

The smoothie was purple with suspicious chunks floating in it, but I took it all the same, grateful for any act of kindness. “Thank you so much,” I said, trying hard to make my face agree with my words. “What’s in it?” I found, after what I’d witnessed of her preparation, that I was scared to know the answer. 

“I call it my brainstorming smoothie,” she said proudly, glowing a little. “I drink it when I’m preparing to write, because it gets the creative juices flowing.” Considering the kind of stuff she wrote, I really wished she’d gone for a different choice of words. “There’s kale, for starters—I’m just as surprised as you are that Jason has fresh kale. Maybe he’s not as bad a guy as you’d think. I don’t believe bad people generally eat kale. Also, I added anchovies for protein. And, um, blueberries, because of the antioxidants.” 

“So good,” I choked. I sounded like I was experiencing intense physical pain, but she smiled anyway, blushing a little. 

“It’s really healthy.” 

“It sure is,” I managed, tears welling up in my eyes for a whole different reason. “Thank you.” And even though it was, quite possibly, the worst thing I’d ever tasted, I forced myself to drink the whole thing. 

“I can make you another if you want. You drank that one right up,” she offered once I’d finished. Dark spots danced in my vision, and I felt sweat beading on my forehead and upper lip. Drinking another one of those might kill me; it wasn’t out of the cards. I was beginning to feel vaguely radioactive. 

“No, I’m good. Thank you so much, though, that was really sweet of you.” And I did mean it, even though the taste still lingered on my tongue—even though I suspected, deep down, she was still on Jason’s side. 

Despite everything else, this is the memory I regret the most, the one that makes me wish I’d been able to save her. 

“Come on then,” she said, taking my glass, “we’re going to start The Walking Dead in a minute. I know you’re, like, a lone wolf and everything, which is super hot by the way, don’t even get me started about the character I’m going to write based on you, but I think that you should spend some time chilling with us. It might get Ian and Alana to trust you more.” I noticed she didn’t include Jason on the list, and I wondered what that meant. I told myself I would ask her later, but I never got the chance. 

So I did. I joined them. When we reached the scene where Rick finds the hospital doors that have been chained shut, Ann and Ian started arguing about whether the spray-painted words were meant to say “don’t open, dead inside” (Ian) or “don’t dead, open inside” (Ann). 

At some point, Jason reappeared, freshly showered and sporting a change of clothes—dark pants and a yellow shirt that said “Equal Rights, Equal Fights” in obnoxious red lettering. Alana climbed onto his lap, where she sat glaring at me while Mr. President thrashed loudly in the pool behind us. One big happy family. 

Even though Jason had mentioned cameras at some earlier point, I’d forgotten about them. I hadn’t realized that there were a dozen of them hidden throughout that cursed garage, everywhere except the bathroom, all feeding into the hard drive of his computer. If you watch the footage backwards, it tells the story of a girl who gets rescued and escapes in a Porsche. 

 

Copyright © 2025 by Elizabeth Brooks