So This Is the New Year

If any of your lame companions has been keeping track of the days, you may at some point be told that it's New Year's Day. Before the zombie apocalypse, this holiday was nothing more than a time to reflect on how much you sucked last year and how much not-different this year will be--but things have changed. Every year that you survive now is actually a real accomplishment--not just a sad, fake accomplishment like before. Now, surviving means you've killed scores of undead, been not-killed by zombies countless times, and have survived the horror of living in close quarters with tag-along survivors. 

So, you should take some time on New Year's Day to reflect on how goddamn awesome you are. You should sit around and play back in your head all the best escapes you've made this year as well as the many glorious zombie decapitations you've scored. 

You've spent an entire year not-dying. That's amazing! Look out on that horde of undead in the distance. It's probably about 100,000 strong. And that's only a tiny percentage of total world zombies. All those people died before you did. All those people suck way more than you. This is like when you used to take standardized testing in middle school and would get the results in the mail, but you wouldn't get a number or letter score. No. What you'd get is the percentile in which you fall in comparison to everyone else who took the test. Now, instead of just being in the 99th percentile for abstract reasoning skills, you're in the 99th percentile for life. 

Take that, everyone else.

God

This is the zombie apocalypse, kids. There's no point in pretending there's a God anymore. God is dead. God would never allow this to happen, at least the God that all those religious people believed in back then, when the world wasn't covered in undead fecal matter. And yes, maybe Jesus was a zombie, but this just goes to prove that Jesus wasn't all that special, because outside your window there are like 5,000 other zombies who aren't pretending to be your savior. They're all out there to eat your goddamn brains straight from your skull and then poop it all over the place. The point being that Jesus was a fraudulent zombie, at best.

At least in this post-apocalyptic world, you can appreciate churches for what they've spontaneously become: zombie traps. For some reason, zombies are drawn to the lingering rancid smell of old church services, so once the doors are opened up, those guys just flood right in, and hopefully someone has the foresight (and arms) to run up and bolt the doors. So instead of shuddering with disgust every time you walk by a church, you can now feel warm inside knowing that it probably houses hundreds of the undead behind those giant, wooden doors. And if you start to feel religious, you can always sneak inside and slaughter whomever you want, which is what you're pretty sure churches were designed for in the first place.

Another nice thing about the existence of the undead is that one of your biggest fraudulent pre-apocalyptic worries is now moot. There's no need to fear or even wonder about what happens post-death. The mystery of the afterlife is gone; the answer is zombies. You're going to be a zombie. The guy who just tripped that old lady is going to a be a zombie. The girl who works with lepers is going to be a zombie. There's no need to believe in a fake god anymore, because you know and have accepted your fate. So go on, rub it in to all those folks who are still sitting around fearing god and praying. And while they're praying, go steal their stuff; they won't need it anymore once they've been disemboweled by the twenty zombies waiting just around the corner.

More on Hypochondria

You've already learned how helpful hypochondria over others will be when it comes to monitoring the human baggage you unfortunately need in case a hoard of zombies attacks. However, don't forget to pour wasteful amounts of antiseptic solution over every possibly zombie-tainted scratch you receive. If you have to cough, do it in private, where others won't suspect you. Any obvious problem with you might cause the distrustful, alpha-dog members of your human baggage to kill you in your sleep, which would really piss you off. The thing is, any minor injury or illness could easily lead to your death now, from any number of sources, and your death means less overall zombie killing.

Just because long-term illnesses are no longer a source of worry, don't get too comfortable in your constantly rash-covered and bruised skin. The little things you used to ignore because you assumed they'd either go away or reach the point where you could just go to an ER for emergency antibiotics can't be ignored now that the zombies have arrived. For instance, you'll have to start paying attention to your regular bodily functions. Because your diet will be unbelievably poor at times, don't be surprised when your fecal matter comes out a strange greenish color or the consistency of Jell-O, or when the somewhat suspect plant you ate yesterday appears in its complete form on the other side, even though you chewed it thoroughly. This is to be expected from time to time now, but it doesn't mean you have to assume it's natural. If there's someone you really, really trust or can overpower easily, have them take a look at every shit that seems suspect. Tell them you'll reciprocate, though you obviously won't.

Note that you will undoubtedly have a nonstop fever because you're constantly breathing zombie virus, even though it's not actually contagious when it's airborne. This is actually a good sign, because it means your immune system is functional and hasn't been compromised by that AIDS you probably contracted during your copious, anonymous sex in the days when you assumed everyone would be dead by Friday after the zombies started appearing. However, an increase in your increase in temperature should cause you to to fake a psychotic break and start heavily exhaling in the presence of all the human baggage around you. Because, hell, if you're going to die, no one else should be allowed to survive either.

Hypochondria

Hypochondria is the only thing that will really help you to stay alive. But, the difference now that there are zombies as opposed to before is that your hypochondria should be directed at every other human around you. Did you hear someone cough? Was that blood she just spit out? Why is he itching his arm? He's been itching his arm for an hour now. Why the FUCK is he itching his arm?! You should constantly examine your fellow survivors secretly for signs of having been bitten and use these extraordinary circumstances to justify the one thing you've always wanted to do: shoot now and ask questions never.

Every now and then you'll come across an old magazine or newspaper that will mention AIDS. You should take a moment to think about how you no longer care even a little bit about AIDS. In fact, AIDS should now seem like a welcome break. The thought of dying in 10 years should seem like a beautiful pipe dream. Cancer, Hepatitis, Ebola, SARS, Swine Flu, MRSA -- you can now say all these words out loud, write them down, and even imagine what it would be like to have them without even breaking a sweat. You could even hold hands with a bunch of harlequin babies while they gurgled the national anthem without throwing up. Things are so much different now...

Even though you know it takes less than a day for a person who's been bitten to turn into a zombie, you should submit to the wiles of your hypochondria anyway. If anyone in your group comes anywhere near a zombie, or is splattered at all with any bit of zombie goo, you should keep a keenly suspicious eye on him for pretty much the rest of his (or your) life. This general suspicion you'll start to harbor towards pretty much everyone should cause you to provoke unnecessary fights with people and raise the sensation of anxiety in your bunker to absolutely frenetic levels. To aid in this, you should also start to say things like "Hey...I've got my eye on you," while gesturing menacingly at your own eye.  

It's important to not connect the facts in your head that every single zombie attack you've seen so far that has resulted in someone becoming a zombie has taken less than a day and the person became almost immediately bed-ridden after the exposure. Because this will be the one time that it takes several days instead of several hours and the person will exhibit no warning signs. This will be the one time where someone will become a zombie inside your bunker and eat you while you're asleep. This will be the one time it's not in your head.

Starting your day counterpoint.

So, as has already been mentioned, the worst thing that could happen for you now is to be killed or turned into a zombie and robbed of experiencing this brand-new world in all its awesomeness. That would be like getting the flu at Disneyland and having to spend the day in the weird-smelling nurse's station while the rest of your family goes on rides and inevitably forgets to bring you home with them.

So, to start your day, you'll have to wake up. This will be pretty easy because in the last few weeks, you've become unable to actually sleep. You may sort of nod off, but you're never far enough into sleep to not jump up at the slightest noise and grab the nearest head-trauma-inflicting object. Ever since zombies happened and work ended, you haven't really needed an alarm. This is great news because now that Rilo Kiley song is no longer synonymous in your head with the hell of waking up and going to work. Now you can listen to it while you stockpile rations. And that feels so much better.

Weekends.

Weekends no longer hold any meaning. At some point within the first month after the zombie apocalypse, you'll stop remembering or caring what day of the week it is. Someone in your group of survivors will probably be the annoying person who insists on remembering those things and reminding everyone about life before zombies. They'll incessantly talk about their family and the things they used to do and will want to stick to some sort of schedule or, god forbid, do some sort of weird, makeshift Sunday church service with people. The only upside to this is that usually, but not always, this person will end up being eaten pretty quickly.

You should spend your weekends much like you spend the rest of your days -- stalking your nearby secured area for any signs of weakness or zombie intrusion, talking to the other survivors in your group but tuning out when anything real or emotional comes out of them due to the fact that they'll probably be dead by the end of the week so there's no point in really getting to know them, and planning your own suicide in the likely event of your being surrounded by zombies with no chance of escape.

If you have an old man in your group, the weekends are also a good time to learn things from him like how to survive in war-time situations, and Canasta.

Starting your day

Waking up in the days after the zombie apocalypse should create conflicted feelings in you. On one hand, you're terribly excited about the zombie apocalypse. On the other hand, you're horribly afraid of being killed by zombies too soon in this wonderful new world. Because for god's sake, you didn't make it this far to exist in a world where it's finally okay to knock the heads off of undead human-type creatures just to get bitten immediately and lose your consciousness. Frankly, that defeats the whole purpose of your having survived, and you might as well go back to regular fraudulent living. Being bitten now would be like when you were a kid and had a Commodore 64 and it would take six hours to load a game, and when it finally loaded your older brother would yell at you for constantly getting killed and ruining the fun, traumatizing you for life. This would be a lot like that, except that you watched your brother get eaten for lunch yesterday by four zombies. So at least that part is different.

So aside from the constant fear, for which your regular fraudulent life should have amply prepared you, you should be pretty ready and eager to start the day every day. If you think about the right way, the zombie apocalypse has caused you to wake up for the first time in your life, and you're finally truly alive. As soon as you open your eyes, throw the covers off quickly and grab the baseball bat by the side of your bed, then peek out your boarded window for any swarms of the undead and to check the weather. If you don't have a baseball bat by now, you'd better have a sledgehammer, or at least a ninja sword. If not, you're going about this all wrong.

As soon as you've decided it's safe to go downstairs, light up that first cigarette. Your days are firmly numbered now, so who cares about cancer anyway? Hell, it'll be a miracle if cancer causes your death now, so smoke up! You can spit those blackened, necrotic pieces of lung at the zombies to taunt them (or possibly to blend in, if necessary). Also, it makes the start of your day that much better, and having a cigarette in your mouth while bashing in the head of a zombie makes you look infinitely more awesome.

After a breakfast of dry cereal and iron-flavored water, you should grudgingly look around your impromptu fortress and see if there are any survivors hiding, which there usually are. If you find one who looks weak, you should briefly consider killing them "by accident" in order to avoid having to expend energy on saving them later. Then again, you might be able to use them to throw at future zombies, the way you'd throw sausages to a snarling dog while robbing a house. If you have to satisfy your bloodlust, go out and kill some zombies in the garage. They're always in the damn garage. Afterwards, as you shower off the residual gore, plan out the rest of your day and where/how you'll forage for food supplies. The water will feel good on your skin, but the smile on your face won't be from that. It'll be because this is the best day of your life. Until tomorrow.