Joey Young, Teenage Zombie Hunter

Hi all.

In honor of  The Walking Dead having had its mid-season finale, I decided to give you a look at something I wrote a while back. My students asked me what I thought would happen if a teenage boy was the only one left in a zombie apocalypse.

This is what I came up with:


Brushing your teeth just doesn't feel as satisfying when a horde of hungry, flesh-eating monsters is trying to break down your door.

The news this morning called it a virus, careful to avoid words like cannibal, zombie, or brain-slurping demon. But I've played enough video games to know what's really going on here.

I, Joey Young, have been training my whole life for this.

When I walk into the kitchen with my backpack, it's empty. My parents never came home from work last night, so I celebrated by eating a family-sized bag of Pizza Rolls, raw, then throwing up on our dog Reginald. The poor idiot is blind, so he didn't see it coming.

I never really considered the fact that my parents wouldn't be back by this morning, and so now it's weird that the words "my parents are gonna kill me" might actually come true.

In the first kitchen drawer, there is a switchblade knife that my dad bought during his midlife crisis. He thinks no one knows about it. I throw it in my bag, not because I think I'll be able to kill any zombies with it, but because I know for a fact I will look like a badass slinging this thing around. This is important because I'm banking on the fact that girls during the end of the world will be less picky. This knife is chick catching material, just saying.

After I slice my pinky open, though, I decide to maybe give it a rest. I shove in a bunch of kitchen knives wrapped in paper towels next, and - as an afterthought - a potato masher.

Next item on the agenda? Mom's taser.

My parents are - were? - sadly anti-gun. Because of this, my mother insisted on a "more humane? weapon in the house. I totally disagree. A taser will make you crap yourself, and I'm sorry, there is nothing humane about a grown man going code brown against his will. I would rather be shot dead.

But where does she keep it? The Almighty Purse maybe... a gigantic fake Michael Kors that no one even pretends to find attractive. The only reason I know what it's called is because she practically introduces it before herself.

Hi, this is my Michael Korsssssssss, and I'm Judy.

Ugh.

Sadly, chances are my mother the zombie is carrying the Almighty Purse with her, introducing it to all her new undead pals.

So, armed with a potato masher in one hand and Dad's illegal knife in the other, I decide to take on the horde.

...Tomorrow.

Yes, tomorrow will be fine. But for right now, there is another bag of Tostitos in the freezer and Mountain Dew in the garage.