March, Part 1

The 1st of March has gone down in history as one of the most unusual days in human history, even moreso than the day before it. The chaos of the 29th was to be expected, the world’s economies crashing, the breakdown of social order, the spikes in murder and suicide rates, the riots, all of that was well within parameters. What happened the day after though, was truly unusual.

On the 1st of March, I woke up at 6am, same as ever. I showered, changed into my uniform, ate breakfast and left for school. My mother, same as ever, made breakfast and went to work. My father, the same.

This phenomenon wasn’t exclusive to us. It happened the world over. Although the apocalypse was upon us, although chaos and destruction rampaged all around us, we carried on with our daily routines.

Historically, if you could call the all-too-brief time between then and now history, the 1st of March became known as Zombie Day. Despite its strangeness, it has never been explained. All of humanity’s greatest psychologists were far too aware of how ruthless desperate people can become, and were far too busy employing survival strategies to analyse the unusual behaviour around them. Personally, I think it was a combination of mass delusion and our brains simply shutting down. Unable to cope with the crushing reality around us, our minds denied it and reverted back to our instinctual daily routines as a defense mechanism. Aptly for its name, it likely spread like a zombie infection. Humans are pack animals, we operate on a monkey see monkey do sort of wavelength. Upon seeing my mother, hard at work making breakfast in the kitchen, a sight typical of my average day-to-day, I too reverted back to normalcy, and then my father followed suit; If this chain of events occurred the world over, it's no wonder Zombie Day played out the way it did.

Zombie Day was more notable for its absurdity than how widespread it does. Most people the world-over were continuing to suffer the consequences of the apocalyptic announcement. While I walked my well-worn path into the street and to school, the value of the dollar dropped to a record low. While I passed the bus stop as I always did, religious tensions in the South boiled over, inciting a civil war. As I turned the corner and crossed a now unsettlingly empty road, three hundred stock-brokers in the capital perished in a mass suicide.

By the time I had arrived at school, the world had already shifted, though I was none the wiser. In my undead state, I could hardly comprehend the fact tragedies were occurring the world over. If you’d had tried to tell me of the horrors in the world, I’d have smiled and told you to stop making up tall tales. Such was the power of Zombie Day’s mass delusion.

The school was unsettling in a way only an empty school could be. Once bustling hallways now silent, hubs of activity that were once alive with teenage emotion were now barren. Only a few people roamed the halls, zombies like myself. Their footsteps squeaked as they rushed through to their classes, moving fast to ensure their thoughts wouldn’t catch up to them and release them from the illusion they were under.

I followed suit. To slow down for even a moment would allow the darkness in and break me from my stupor. I couldn’t allow that. I hurried my way to the first class of the day. I was already settled in my seat by the time I realised where I was and who was in front of me.

Mrs Cook was at the head of the class. I didn’t recognise her for a moment, fresh memories of her warped, dark expression the day before had overwritten my perception of her. Even as she stood, she clearly wasn’t the same as she was before. She was no longer the harpy that had attacked me, but now a ghost. She haunted the classroom, hovering behind her desk, always shaking but never moving.

Her face was hollow. Her eyes stared forward, wide open despite being weighed down by heavy bags. She looked straight past me, but in a different way to the day before. Yesterday, she didn’t see me as a person, only competition; Now she didn’t see me at all.

Her mouth chattered away facts in a flat tone continuously, offering no opportunity for me to interject. Each syllable seemed to slip out of her mouth more than be spoken. She lacked the strength to speak, but couldn’t allow herself to be silent.

I followed suit, scribbling down every word she spoke to keep myself occupied. I scrawled for hours, my pencil scraped down bit by bit, leaving crumbs of graphite straining both my fingertips and the paper. I continued nonetheless, page after page of incomprehensible etchings. At some point, Mrs Cook stopped speaking cohesive sentences, just words with some vague connection, following the rules of grammar more out of vague obligation than any purpose. And I dutifully copied down every single syllable.

The bell rang. I looked up from my page finally. My hands were cramped and sore, defaulted to a claw grip now. My eyes could hardly manage to focus anymore, the world around me suddenly alien and blurred. I had been writing for 6 hours without even realising.

Mrs Cook’s voice was hoarse, she spoke even despite the bell blaring loudly over her. There was pain in her words, though they were nonsense, each one expressed the immense strain her vocal chords were under, as well as the fear she was holding back by continuing to speak for so long.

It was only then that I realised I had been totally alone in her classroom. Her and I had been together in this room for 6 hours and hadn’t exchanged a single word. My stomach dropped and my head spun as I came to this realization, yet I didn’t speak. I just rose from my seat and left without a word.

In that moment of clarity, it all came flooding back. I was going to die in a year, and so was everyone I knew and loved. It wracked my mind like a billion needles from within.

I couldn’t even dream of speaking to Mrs Cook, of breaking her from the spell she was under and forcing her back to that reality, as I knew it was an infinitely worse pain than her aching legs and ragged throat. Several days later she was found unconscious in that classroom.

I still think I did the right thing.