Walking back, you couldn’t help but feel the wind pick up, leaving the whistling sound of kazoos to flutter freely, guiding you back to the sliding door at the back of your house. As you stepped inside the house, you immediately positioned yourself in the kitchen, which was void of any good food. The only thing that you could make was a cheese sandwich, no butter. Just bread and cheese. To remedy the quality of the food, you decide to order from Doordash instead. At least, you were. The app kept saying that “your region is unsupported.” This repeated for every other fast-food app on your phone.

It was like the universe wanted you to have that depressing cheese sandwich. So, unwillingly, you comply.

Two slices of plain white bread, sandwiching one slice of all-american cheese. You hated to look at it. It was a physical representation of giving up. And you were going to eat it, of all things. Surely vegetables covered in mercury would be more appetising than this. Without sparing another second of agony, you scarf the thing down whole as if it was a potato chip.

You sat alone in the dark kitchen, wondering how everything got so wrong. The overcast outside grew thicker, covering every inch of blue that was the sky, blocking natural light from coming into your house. The room smelt of nothing, and subsequently you felt nothing. It was such a nothing moment.

—

You sat on the couch with the television on. Images passed without much order to them. You didn’t know anything that was happening on screen. Not that you couldn’t understand it in general, but because the clarity you had after waking up on the couch blurred any sense of reason or order you had in your mind.

And, just before you could understand anything that was happening, your power shoots out. The clock on the wall stops. The tv stops. Life kind of just stops. Your eyes direct outside, the tapping of raindrops drizzle the glass sliding door. You couldn’t see out of it, a particular hardcore darkness fogged the backyard. And, with the crack of lightning, light seeps in, forming a darkened figure of a man, staring right in at you beyond the glass door.

Less than half a second was all it took to realise the situation you were in. What didn’t help was that the man, noticing you noticed him, began trying to pry the door open with their hands, and aggressively. The situation worsened as you didn’t know if it was a home invader or someone just as lost as you are. But, that concern blew away as the sounds of the door trying to be opened subsided. And, with the crack of another lightning bolt, that man disappeared from the door.

They had to have been an invader. The lights going out, the fact they’re trying to access your house through the back, their aggressive nature. There could be no other reason.

After all, it could be a zombie. Like in the notes.

It was all real. It had to have been. Why is there no-one in the town? Why did the last owner talk about zombies? Why was the train, on your arrival, completely empty? It all made too much sense.

Sparing no second, you take flight to the kitchen, ripping your utensils drawer open, and grabbing onto the biggest knife there was. The blade was no longer than your hand, but it would suffice for now.

Just as you close the drawer, banging sounds arrive from the window. Violent ones. Like whoever was out there wanted in, and now.

As the lightning cracked again, for the third time, you look to see that no-one was at the kitchen window. Just as you realised that, the lock on the sliding door undoes itself. You rush over to the living room, confronted by a tall, green man, standing with the door completely open, letting in the sounds and the smells of the storm in. It was putrid. And all they were doing was looking at you. Mouth gaping open directly at you.

You stood frozen, but not for long. You let out a scream that only suggested the word “zombie” before running at them, knife about to be plunged in their chest.

Just before that was going to happen, a large force came blasting into your face, like an airbag on the highway.