I've erased and rewritten this sentence seven times. There is no right way to begin explaining how society collapsed, billions died and this zoo became the only stronghold for humanity. But events need to be recorded, no matter their ghastliness or the lack of organized archives. No matter the grossly unqualified and tormented author. No matter that tomorrow there may be no one left to read these words..
After the first news broke, the story of the body parts washing up, we joked about how we would take shelter at the Point Defiance Zoo. I knew how to get in, how to work the generators, where the guns were, and of course, how to care for the animals; it would be perfect. But when the hospitals closed and governments imposed the futile quarantines, things got serious. I made a list. Those inane dinner-party queries-- if you could take only three items to a deserted island, what would they be?--became sickeningly real. I kept the car packed with retrospectively stupid items. Razors, a comb, photo albums, a scarf, mascara. Mascara, like I was going on a weekend getaway. Idiot.
But once that man checked into Sacred Heart in Spokane with a wild twitch in his left eye and my cell phone's signal faded into nothing, we climbed onto the roof of our apartment complex and didn't come down for four days. The noise of car horns, gunfire, screams, and the horrible silence afterward—all of it haunts me.
Now that I'm at the zoo, there's no way to contact my family. All I know is that they weren't at our rendezvous point. When I left the old willow tree on Sylvester Road without them, without any of them, something snapped. Like when the eye-doctor changes the lens in front of your eyes and with a click, the world is completely different. And that's how it's been ever since.
The faces of the possessed people—what else to call them? Zombies? Ridiculous. Their slack-jawed, expressions, the oozing pustules, the dripping orifices—I can't write anymore. Partly because the thought of those almost-human abominations makes me ill, but also because it's dawn. Someone has to collect the eggs from the ducks and chickens and give the tiger his medication.