Double Damnation

Look at this dumbass. Stumbling around, barely able to put one foot in front of the other.

Just over a month ago, I died. I wasn't the only one. Then my body picked itself up and carried right back on. Again, not the only one.

That was around the time that the earth found out that zombies were real. Came as a real shock. I've got no idea how it all started, but not long after that I got bitten.

Dying was a real bummer. Such incredible pain as the venom spread through my body, and the last thing I saw was some fugly ass zombie munching on me.

When I "came to", I saw myself getting to my feet. As in, from about 5 feet away. The bite wound on my shoulder was an inky black, with any red lines forming a web around the whole shoulder and neck area. The eyes were dead, and heavy dark bags had formed. But what really got me was the utterly gormless expression on the face, my face.

I fervently hoped that I'd never had that stupid look on my face whilst I was alive, although I probably had something similar at some point.

The dissociation took a little while to process, my body had already started moving and I was walking along behind it as it finally clicked. I was dead. Wow, sucks.

You'd think that being dead, nothing could hurt me, but apparently that's not true. As I stood dumbstruck by my new deceased status, a splitting pain came over me, like someone was trying to chisel open my skull. I yelled out in pain and I saw my zombie self stop its shuffle.

I walked towards myself and felt the pain start to recede. Interesting... I took a few steps back and sure enough there was the pain again. So much for the freedom of the grave. It looked like I was stuck with myself so I walked over and took in the hot mess that was my animated corpse.

It was stood still, shoulders slightly slumped, staring straight ahead. I'd seen from it's walk that it wasn't the most mobile, and that made me wonder how I'd got caught by one of these ponderous morons, but it appeared that would be the last mistake I'd ever make.

"So I'm stuck following you around? Wonderful..."

Something happened. The dead eyes flickered to me, stood just off centre of its vision. It was only for a moment, but I knew it could hear me. I shouted and waved my arms furiously and it shuffled round to face in my direction. It still wasn't looking directly at me, but this was proof.

"You can see me..." this was good to know. As I thought about this, my body started moving again, walking straight through ghost me, zombie me continued his trudge. I shouted after him, but only received a grunt in reply.

We walked for about an hour or so. His pace didn't change so I assumed that he didn't get tired, and as long as I stayed in close proximity to my body then I didn't really feel anything.

When I saw the first zombie cross our path, I actually had to quell a rising panic. Then it hit me, there wasn't exactly much that it could do to me, and my body was already a zombie. The other zombie was going to pass pretty close to us, so I stepped out in front of it and waved. Nothing. Well they aren't the most responsive of beasts so I yelled and threw my arms in front of it's face.

For the second time in an hour I was walked through. This one didn't even acknowledge my presence. I ran back towards my body and waved my arms in front of its face. Again, the eyes flickered towards me for the briefest moment before continuing on its course.OK then, more data, it looks like I'm haunting me.

Which is a shame, because it's embarrassing watching my body shuffle and grunt its way along the countryside. You know how you never like how you sound when you hear your voice recorded? Or when the front facing camera opens on your phone? Well imagine that you've spent all last night drinking, you fell down a hill whilst drunk and you're covered in mud, and you only got an hours sleep. You'd look pretty rough, right? Now imagine you've got to see yourself look like that. All day.

By this point I'd say that we'd walked about 6 or 7 miles and we came to a quite large train terminal. My body stumbled inside and almost appeared to be searching for something. The rocking, lurching stride hadn't changed, but the head shifted swiftly back and forth, and I could hear a sniffing, as if it was trying to use all its senses.

Suddenly, a dart of movement, and a young couple were running across the tracks. They were holding hands and appeared to be the first living people I'd seen since my death. A momentary glimmer of excitement was swiftly extinguished as my zombified body started chasing after them.

I screamed in horror as I realised what was about to happen and I sprinted after the three of them. I yelled after my zombie self but he just wouldn't listen, there was no flicker of recognition, this was a wild beast, with the scent in its nostrils, and there was no stopping it now.

Up ahead, the man in the couple tripped on one of the train tracks and went tumbling. The woman tried desperately to get him back to his feet, and they set off scrambling again but the gap had decreased significantly.

Trying to stop the atrocity that was about to happen, I cut across a platform to get ahead of them. As I run I see another two zombies come out from the left hand side of the station, cutting across to intercept the hapless people that can't see them coming from down on the tracks. I leap down in front of them and scream myself hoarse for them to turn right but they can't hear me or see me.

They don't get more than a dozen steps further before the two zombies that were flanking them come flying off the platform, taking them down and ripping into them with a horrifying zeal.

I turned away in disgust just to see my zombie form heading towards the kill.

"No, " I plead with the zombie. "You don't have to do this." My zombie tries to sweep me aside, but his arms go straight through me. There is no shred of humanity here, just an animal need to feed. I have no desire to watch what is happening now, so I run. I run as far as I can until the pain takes me, but I can still hear.

It seemed like the longest time before the sounds changed, and a shuffling caused me to turn back and see zombie me making his way back in my direction. He stopped in front of me and I yelled and I railed against him but there was no sign of emotion or recognition beyond a grunt and then he set off again.

I threw up my arms in exasperation but had no choice but to follow. He didn't go very far and ended up sat in what used to be a newsagents near the main entrance of the train station. At a point near the far wall he stopped walking. I couldn't tell if he had chosen the spot at random or if there was something significant about it, but zombie me just sat down, back hunched and stared at the ground in front of him.

I slid down the wall and sat with my head in my ghostly hands. Outside the windows dropped darker and darker but the lights inside the building were occasionally flickering but holding steady. After about 2 hours I looked up, zombie me still unmoving. As the silence began to draw on I started to talk. The head rose at the sound of my voice but he didn't look at me or respond. I talked for hours about anything and nothing, reliving old memories, trying to gauge a reaction.

Unfortunately, none seemed forthcoming. He could hear me, but the words meant nothing. So we went back to silence for the remainder of the night.

Do you know what zombies do with most of their time? Nothing. As best as I could tell, my zombie self didn't move from that spot for around 3 days, by which time I'd explored the station as fully as I could manage with my limited range. I'd tried to get him to move so I could go somewhere different but nothing doing.

And that was my month, in a nutshell. The zombie went out hunting, twice with similarly gruesome results, and at night I sometimes talked to him, just so I had someone to communicate with. I had a lot of time to think about why I was here, why had I become a ghost?

The only thing that I could think of was that my soul, if such a thing existed, couldn't rest whilst my body, that I still felt responsible for, was out here causing carnage.

There was only one thing for it.

I was going to have to die. Again.