Eve

Prologue

I have a theory.

Shut up, I know that's a crappy way to start a story. It's something potheads say. I know, I know. "Hey, dude. Dude, I have a theory. I have a theory about why they don't sell buns and hot dogs in the same quantity. It's about the government."

But listen. My theory is nice. And I'm not high. It's a theory about people, and why we love the end of the world. Are you ready?

There was this article I read on the internet, back when there was an internet. Some big name from the UCLA Psychology School was talking about zombies, and why people suddenly seemed to love them at the start of the century, for no reason at all. And this guy, this big shot scientist person, he said it was because of our fear of becoming 'zombified' by mass consumption and by the media. In our post-modern world, we feared undead post-apocalypticism because zombies are shallow like we were becoming. They're all the same when you're watching Brad Pitt blow their brains onscreen. De-humanized. And that's how our greed-geared, capitalist, mediacentric society saw us, and that's what we were afraid we were becoming. Zombies.

Well, I'm a zombie, and I can tell you that's a load of crap.

It's not about that! People aren't smart enough to make those connections, are you crazy? Even in a subconscious level, that's giving us waaay too much credit.

My theory is this -- the real reason zombies became cool was because life was too boring. Getting up, getting to class, listening to Mr. Thompson all day long, going home to your bored mom and dad, going to bed. Then doing the same thing in college. Then having kids. Then your kids doing the same thing you did when you were their age. Then your kids going to college.

And then, before you know it, you were all dead, and God forbid you have to watch all that crap flashing in front of your eyes all over again at the end.

The world was a nine-to-five, white-shirt-black-tie spiral of 'Kill me now!' and Power Point presentations. I mean, for God's sake, Ted Talks were popular. People watched Ted Talks, that's how boring it got.

So of course we dreamed of the wasteland. We dreamed of the vine-wrapped half-buildings and the abandoned superhighways dotted in car skeletons and rumble. We dreamed of a world with no midterms and no SATs. A world where no one cared who was at the party last night, or who had the biggest boobs, or the coolest car. A world that was fresh start.

And the zombies – the zombies were the icing on the cake. The zombies were there to tickle that genetic coding inside of us – that little voice trailing back millions of years into our past, whispering 'Hunt.' 'Run.' 'Hide.'

'Kill.'

That voice we muffled, but could never completely silence. It's still there – it's why virtually every video game ever made involves killing. It's why sports ever became a thing. It's why we bought branded shirts and redecorated our kitchens so that it looked better than our neighbor's kitchen. Competition. Food chain. Survival.

That voice reminding us that we're animals, and we need to kill to stay alive. And what's better to kill than zombies? Zombies aren't people, right? They aren't even animals, they're just... there. Blobs of blood and flesh, ready to let us release our inner beasts onto their skulls through baseball bats and machine guns.

That's why we dreamed of zombies.

And then they really happened, and we all became them, and everything went to shit.