Dead Man Smoking

I found another convenience store this morning - windows shattered into bloody diamond chips, food rotted in the cold cases, warm sodas tumbled on the floor. I filled my pack with jerky, booze, and cigarettes. I'm not picky about brands anymore. At the last place, someone had beat me to the best picks - I smoked cloves and menthols for a week and drank wine coolers with names like "Fuzzy Navel," wondering all the while why anyone would name a drink something like that. I wish drinks would call themselves what they are. Calm-You-Down, Fuck-You-Up, Make-You-Wake-Up-in-Another-State-Covered-in-Someone-Else's-Bodily-Fluids. Things like that. They wouldn't sell well, obviously. People don't hunger for truth in their liquor.

Cigarettes, though - there's a different story. Back before the epidemic, every nonsmoker jumped at the chance to tell me I was killing myself, as though I hadn't heard the same sermon a thousand times before. I've always figured, at least this way I know what's killing me. Sooner or later, something's going to get you. It also gives me something to do with my hands and mouth, which I need in a world with no one to talk to and no one to fuck. I haven't seen anyone breathing in over a month, but I grab a pack of Trojans anyway, as an afterthought. Why not? They're light.

The funny thing is, aside from the boredom, I kind of like the world like this. No one tells me I'm ruining my life. Hell, at least I have a life, which is more than most people can say nowadays. No more lies, no more cheating, none of the paranoia and hypocrisy that humanity seemed to thrive on. If I can say one good thing about zombies, it's that they're honest. The first woman I ever met who showed me what she really wanted right off the bat was also the first woman I ever beat to death (redeath? undeath? traditional language seems faulty nowadays) with a tire iron. Speaking of which, I should check the hardware store while I'm in town. I pull a fresh pack of cigarettes out of my pack, glance at the Surgeon General's warning, shrug, and light up. It doesn't really matter.

Sooner or later, something's going to get you.