My Real Life Zombie Story

So the following story happened about 3 weeks ago. It is, however, just as relevant today as it was back then...

I worked the late shift at my high school Prom a few weeks ago which wasn't too bad because the "late" shift ended at 11pm. I was gone by 11:20, so life was good. As far as Prom goes, it was a nice outdoor dance at the Carnton Plantation in Franklin, TN. (When I looked up the Carnton Plantation online the first picture I saw was a graveyard. That was weird. I guess it is an old civil war historical site, with a few ghost stories from over the years and one during our Prom). Anyways, Prom is not the point of the story. It is the next day..

After a night of watching teenagers acting like adults (kind of)and witnessing how awkward some people are when they try and dance (reminding me of, well, me at every dance I ever went to) I spent the next morning in Church listening to the good word. It would have been the perfect Sunday to have the ever-so-random talk or testimony shared about the Apocalypse or aliens coming to Earth to fulfill ancient Old Testament prophecy as found in an unknown spin-off Da Vinci Code novel. Enough of this palaver, let me get to the good stuff.

So I'm driving home from Church, feeling all good inside, when I turn onto Murfreesboro Road and see some dude standing in the middle of the road covered in blood. My jaw dropped and I slowed the car to a slow creep as I passed this guy. He is wearing shorts and shoes, no shirt, and has blood all around his mouth and covering his chest. He was just walking down the road as if it was a normal day and I could do no more than stare. When I finally passed the guy, I looked forward (yes, I most definitely took my eyes off the road at 3 mph) and I see another guy in the road with three huge slashes across his chest and blood all over. "No way!" Thoughts were racing at this point. Did I just miss some epic throwdown between these two? Again, they are walking down the middle of the road in the middle of the day, and nobody else is really out. What's that? Oh sure, I could have rolled down the window and asked if they were okay...if I wanted to die! No way was I coming close to these guys. I locked the car doors, then pushed the lock button over and over just to make sure it was really locked. So I continue down the road in disbelief and finally I see what looked like a mom and her two kids walking down the road. Whew. Something normal. Except they weren't! I drove past and craned my neck in an effort to remind myself what normal people look like and all I saw were three more people whose shirts and faces were covered in dark red blood. WHAT IS GOING ON!?!? Man, I am not hanging around for this. I put the pedal to the metal and start flying down the road. And that is when it happens. A massive crowd of people walk out from around a building just up ahead and they are all torn up and covered in blood. Now, once or twice growing up I played those shoot-em-up video games where you are the last person left on Earth and everyone has turned to zombies, so my first thoughts are "How fast do I need to be going in order to run these zombies over? Is it safe to throw it in reverse after the first hit for a second pass, just to make sure they are dead? Do zombies actually die? I need firearms, machetes, medical supplies, water, food, a change of clothes and some mace - where is the nearest WalMart?" In the end I went untouched down the road, but feared that I would go home and give Rowan a hug, only to be bit in the neck and become one of them. But it was okay. I got home and everything was normal, except for a thousand questions that needed answering and a sure night of nightmares awaiting.

Fast forward to Mr. Stolle's 2nd period Spanish class on Monday morning.

"So how was everybody's weekend? Did anything awesome happen?" The class responds with their usual answers ("Well ya, but i can't talk about it in school", "I babysat for 15 hours", "I just listened to my ipod all weekend long.") Then I notice a girl who has a pretty bad sunburn. "So Alex, you obviously did something outside. What'd you do?" She answered, "Well, I rollerbladed for 5 hours on Saturday with my friends. It was a lot of fun. Oh, and then on Sunday, I got to be an extra in a movie." "Well that's cool. What movie?" "It's called Deathstar. It is going to be on the sci-fi channel." "Really, sci-fi? So like aliens or futuristic technology gone wrong?" "It was a zombie movie. All of us extras were cast as zombies, so we were covered in blood and fake scars." Cue the light bulb over my head. "So, where was this movie filmed, Alex?" "Oh, we were in La Vergne, right off of Murfreesboro Road."

I was driving through part of a movie set! Given that it was about noon, I imagine it was lunch time and the extras were heading off to lunch. You think my freak out was bad. Imagine the sandwich artist in Subway who looked uo to see zombies coming in his store!

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And in some unrelated news, Beth asked Mikayla last night if she new a word that rhymes with "mom". Her answer was quick, "Cow." Hmmmm. I'll take on the zombies any day.