Here is the link of my new story published in the online magazine Sprout
http://sproutm.yolasite.com/a-walk-across-the-zombieland-vi.php
Or read here
A walk across the Zombieland
By Anand Prakash
As usual, he woke up late.
How
would he cross the Zombieland? A thought surfaced in his mind.
Alone.
Still
he has to go.
He
hastily went over his routine things. After taking couple of bites of a
denatured chicken egg sandwiched, he gulped a full glass of strawberry colored
liquid. He packed up seasoned turkey legs and rice for his lunch before
stepping out of his apartment. It supposed to be snowing out but thanks to global
warming the Sun almost made him sweat in early January. He didn’t mind as long
as the Sun disperses menacing grey clouds for one thing he didn’t like forced
gloominess.
Somewhere an engine squealed when force-started while
another one fluttered when accelerated. Still, there was no sign of a vehicle
on the main road. He knew where he would
find the vehicles, so he didn’t care. As he paced on the sidewalk with alternating
red and white concrete blocks, he saw a lonely red car parked in front of a
recently closed bank branch. In the car, he noticed a female body with eyes
closed and strapped with seat belt in sunbathing posture. Did somebody strap her
here? Or she stayed on her free will? When nothing supported either of his
hypotheses, he moved on the sidewalk.
On either side of the sidewalk, only apartment complexes stayed.
People, drinks, books, cell phones, and everything from the porch of these apartments
had disappeared long ago. Even the windows which let out inappropriate human
cries during afternoons remained barren and silent. Once again and almost
addictively, he studiously relished the power of the pop culture in the names
of the apartment complexes: Puss(y) in the Boot, The Liquor Dozzen, The
Crocodile Undie, Confessions of an Alcoholic, etc. A solid and soulful humor
never dies, he smiled as he thought. Or was he biased of their memories? He
debated over it many times on these longs walks.
An offensive smell broke his chain of
thoughts once again. He circumvented the dumpster. Still in front of him, lay
the half opened blue colored cookie box, yellowed wrappers of some cheese,
brown broken glass with a name synonymous with beer, and a squished can with
few micro-liters of brown water. The scene brought the memories of a developed
and littering civilization returned and almost bald cross-roads with sketches
of tires supported his observation of such a civilization. After habitually
waiting for the pedestrian sign, he crossed the road.
An
advertising board in front of an administrative building announced the timing
and ticket price of some moustache-less comedian with a serious face. Many red
buildings followed. These buildings stood like a group of spooky creatures
which had scared and belittled him many a times. He ran past these buildings
and reached to the corner of a red building where three broken bicycles were
tethered to the bicycle stand. There he turned right and walked upward on a slope.
Because of the slant, the lit windows of library gave him a monstrous look as
if demanding the reason for his long absence. As he passed the closed library,
he promised to come here more often in future.
At
the corner of the library, he took a left turn. There was more than one reason
for taking this turn. First, he had no interest in meeting caffeine zombies
coming from a chain coffee shop which had chained the population since time
immemorial. Also by taking this route, he would miss the food shops with
similar sign and symbol across the states or borders. These food shops promised
to serve the same quality of food across the county. Is that possible? He had
always asked.
Straying away from a route comes with a cost. Though
chances were rare in this season but he could still have a chance encounter
with some liquor vampires. The liquor places had invited students on the first
day of school, last day of school, and days in between by giving one reason
(this is your first day of school, come and celebrate with us) or others (this
is your last day of school, come and celebrate with us, etc.). During those
days, he didn’t know whether he celebrated but he remembered eating canned food
and bagels. “Eat bagel here.” He read the sign next to the town’s official
tattoo shop. The sign became meaningful only when he located a Bagel shop next
to the tattoo shop.
Couple
more shops later, his eyes landed on the church timings. Is the church still
open even in absence of majority of students? He wondered. Once again he
questioned the meaning of a religion and a mess and once again his mind
considered him intellectually incapable of understanding of such high concepts.
But the rules and regulations of Oyster city sheriff department were easy on
his mind. The black and white cars parked there to save the remaining public,
may be from encroaching madness or confusing loneliness or both.
Satisfied,
he crushed a twig on the sidewalk. An engine made a clicky-clacky sound as if it had some starting problem. He waited
for the car which didn’t appear. The yellow grass on the left of the sidewalk
reminded him of his childhood jaundice. To avoid that, he eyed on the flyers
hanging on the silver colored electric poles. All of these colorful flyers
wished something good – good like have a good year, have a good winter, and
have a good …whatever… Even before he gets out of this wishful yet highly
improbable ‘promise’ trap, the dried trees stood like black bony ghosts in his
proximity. He hurried past figment of his horrific imagination.
What really made him smile were the flags. The
flailing university, town, and state flags, one above another, hung on a
longest silver pipe he had seen. It seemed that the loneliness had suck up all
the enthusiastic wind from this area.
The red and white concrete blocks of the sidewalk culminated in the
spiral shape of a DNA double helix, hereditary material of living organisms.
Standing at the one strand of the DNA helix, he checked for vehicles in the
parking lot on the far right. The cars and trucks of different colors, not
necessarily the red color, were immobilized there. Still standing there, he
admired the red colored bricks of the three storied building in front of him.
By the time he will come out of this building, everything would be dark and
ominous. The students called this building as Department of Biology.
Obediently,
he followed the spiral strand of the DNA helix as if it was one of the duty of
a biology graduate student. Next to the gate, he swiped the card, pulled the
doors, and walked on a dull red rug. The clean air filled up his lungs and he
coughed. He was well aware what he would find here: people talking about
research. Strange though it seems but here all the talks start with research
and ends with research. The research talks had seeped everywhere: in conference
rooms, labs, and even restrooms. Some people even claimed that research is life
and life is research but he couldn’t find all the answers in research. For him,
life has become series of painfully monotonous emotions.
And he was ready to face new emotions. He was
ready to face new faces which do other things he had almost forgotten to do:
talk about games and ships (relationships, friendships, ownerships, etc.),
sobering up only to get high again, filling up the library during Sundays and
exams, talking to their gadgets, running all around the campus irrespective of
day and night, crying for marks, and freaking out on presentations, and faces
in general which spans all the possible human emotions.
He
had to wait. He knew that.
This
place turns into a Zombieland twice a year, at least, one during summer and one
during winter.
And
till then, he had to walk across the Zombieland.
Daily.
Alone.
