We Hate Zombies

Scenario:
You’re late for your Monday deadline, and that was three days ago. It’s Thursday, the day before that other more important day, and the boss says you have to get a story out in the newspaper by that evening or face the can. Luckily, a hot story jumps out of the news feed and hits you in the chest. Zombies have invaded downtown. They’re moving slow, but nobody knows about them. Nobody but you, and you have the power to spread the word. But do you waste time getting the news out? What do you do?

What you should do:
Ah, well, you could sit around and think about verbage and how not to make people panic, but it won’t really matter once shit starts hitting the fan. Everyone is going to panic, you’re going to be left behind in the top of a news building, the world is going to blow up in a zombie orgy, and there will be no one left to remember how you had wanted to be the next Shakespeare instead of the next yellow journalist. So let’s keep this short, I guess.

Slam out a one-liner about how everyone should remain calm and stay indoors. Then, while your jack-assery is spreading through the vines, hit the road as fast as you can. Try to get ahead of the crowd. You can write shit once you get to a place where there’s no one to read anything, because that’s the next chance you’ll be able to screw around long enough to write a letter to your momma. Until then, it’s the same old running just like in every scenario.

Of course, if you wanted to take the high road and do some newspapering, call up the military and some hospitals and take some interviews real fast, then throw down some news bulletins and whatever else it is that you would do to make people feel more informed while still knowing next to nothing. After that, of course, it would be too late to try and escape, so you should bar the doors and focus on gathering food and weapons and survivors into groups that will obey your intelligent commands. The newspaper boys… God rest their souls.

What I would do:
Now, I’m not one to just go off and run blindly into danger, just like I’m not one to drink too much and stay up too late playing Dead Rising or The Last Guy. Still, I have been known to add a little danger to my life, especially when my life is boring. There was this one time when I was sitting in a class I used to have, and there was this long and pointless lecture about something dumb, and suddenly I realized that everyone in my room was a zombie and my professor was a mad scientist. That’s when I picked up a chair and started brutalizing those damn zombies, but to add a little extra danger, I pulled the ripcord on my parachute. See what I did there? Danger!

So here I am on a boring Thursday and my boss is yelling at me to write some gibberish down on paper that would at best illicit a yawn from early morning coffee drinkers, and what comes across my desk but something to make me feel alive again? Mother fucking zombies, that’s what! Sure, I could jot something misleading down before I headed the opposite direction, but where’s the danger in that. Seriously, you tell me, where’s the danger in that?

Instead, I would grab up a bullhorn and a giant inflatable green gorilla (every newspaper office has at least two in stock) and head off toward the nearest zombie invasion, desperately hyperventilating to blow up that gorilla whilst shouting through the bullhorn that people needed to clear the heck outta there. Once I’d reached the invasion, I would no doubt ninja kick the first zombie, then use the gorilla as a battering ram to knock all the zombies down. That would add a little danger, a little spice, and it would make me feel just as exhilarated as those undead bastards will never feel again.

There’s really no purpose behind it though, just having fun. After I got bored of fighting zombies with an inflatable gorilla, I’d start throwing grenades and running toward safety. Maybe my antics would buy other people enough time to escape, I don’t know. What I do know, however, is that I don’t need a reason to throw grenades, and I don’t need a reason to sleep at night. Moral predicaments? Kiss my ass.