Gone with the Flesh
The song was terrible.
“Armies of hungry people, bodies made of flesh,
Marching like ants and they never rest…”
It crackled through Zack’s phone speaker as we walked the shoulder of Highway 12, pine trees crowding the road on both sides.
“Turn it off,” I said.
“It’s vintage,” Zack said. “Old zombie hip hop. You have to respect it.”
“Zombies aren’t vintage. They’re not real.”
“Exactly,” he said. “So relax.”
Relax.
We were ten miles from Ferrisville with an empty tank because Zack insisted we could “coast it in.” Gas was expensive. His logic was not.
Around us, the forest felt too quiet. No birds. No wind. Just that low, insulated silence you get when trees swallow sound.
“People go missing out here,” I said.
“People go missing everywhere.”
“Not like this.”
The song ended mid-verse.
“…Soon you’ll walk with no aim, that’s your claim to fame—”
Zack slipped the phone into his pocket.
That’s when something moved in the trees.
Not wind.
Movement.
Close.
We both froze.
Branches shifted. Footsteps—slow, dragging.
Zack leaned toward me. “Probably a deer.”
The deer stepped into the road.
It was not a deer.
It was a man. Or something that used to be one.
Gray skin. Torn jacket. Eyes unfocused but not entirely empty.
Behind him, more shapes emerged between the trunks.
“Run,” I said.
We ran.
Not heroically. Not strategically. Just panicked sprinting down a road that suddenly felt very narrow.
“They’re slow!” Zack shouted. “Zombies are slow!”
One of them wasn’t.
I heard it before I saw it—measured footfalls gaining on us. Not dragging. Not stumbling. Running.
I glanced back.
He moved differently. Cleaner. More coordinated. His skin was pale green, like oxidized copper. Not decayed—preserved.
He closed the distance.
Zack veered off into the trees.
I tripped.
My knee hit asphalt. Hard.
By the time I rolled over, he was standing above me.
Up close, he looked less monstrous than the others. His eyes were clear. Alert.
“You’re pretty fast,” he said calmly. “Hard to catch up to.”
I blinked.
“You talk?”
“Of course I talk.”
Prefer to listen? [Listen to Episode The Ester Problem]