We always figured we’d die eventually in an attack. I mean, come on. We’d all seen enough horror movies to know that the entire group of college kids NEVER survives the zombie attack, ya know? Well, it’s one thing to die in combat, and it’s another thing entirely to die in the express checkout lane at Stop and Shop. Of all the rotten luck…

You know, we’d seen all the movies. We knew everything there was to know about zombies. You have your Resurrected Zombies, which crawl out of the grave to feed, and you have your Infected Zombies, who behave as such because of a virus or rare disease. You’ve got zombies that spread the infection with a bite, thus producing new zombies, and you’ve got zombies that just kill. It’s a fine art of distinction.

We fortified our dorm rooms as soon as we realized that the world was ready for everything except a zombie attack. My room, being closest to the parking lot, was the likely place to organize a team effort.

The plan was as follows: as soon as rumors of a zombie attack reached our ears, our group of friends would drop whatever they were doing and assemble in my room. There, we would be prepared with various weapons, such as baseball bats and steak knives. Alas, we would have to wait until chaos had taken over before we would be able to secure guns.

Chris and Teddy would run for the parking lot, fending off zombies as they went. They’d get the cars and come for the rest of us, and we’d head for the nearest gun shop. We had run drills. We talked about all the possible things that could go wrong. We were ready.

Hell, we even had wardrobes planned out. Leather. Lots of leather. It’s a tough material for zombies to bite through. No short sleeves or tank tops, please. There’s nothing you can do if you’re being ripped apart by a hoard of zombies, but the leather can easily prevent you from being nipped.

Nipped.

What a hell of a way to go, really. When you think of the death waiting for you within the reeking jaws of a flesh eating zombie, being “nipped” doesn’t exactly sound like a glorious end. There’s no glory in it at all, really. By your own foolishness, you’ve rendered yourself useless to your friends, who could really have used your help. Not only are you doomed to die, you’re also going to turn into a zombie, making more trouble for your friends.

Ah, we had such plans. Big cars and big guns and loud music; we were single-handedly going to save humanity.

Unfortunately, it didn’t turn out quite as planned. The other kids in the dorms thought we were weird. They didn’t see that we were doing all of this to eventually save THEM! To make it worse, zombies never came.

Boy was that embarrassing. We spent weeks warning everyone of impending attacks, and the damned creatures never showed up. Ah, but what did it matter if they were a little late? We were prepared, and that was all that counted. We were going to live to see the end of the world. But I digress. Back to Stop and Shop…

It was a Saturday afternoon, and the store was absurdly crowded. I had battled my way through out-of-control elderly drivers in the parking lot solely to buy myself a new carton of milk. I just HAD to have my cereal, didn’t I?

Well, apparently the old man behind me was infected with some form of zombie virus. God only knows how he caught it; probably humping the atrophied corpse of his dead wife or something. So while I stood there, impatiently waiting for the slow girl behind the register to ring up the lady in front of me with the screaming kid, the man behind me leaned over and nipped me, oh-so-gently, on my exposed neck.

He didn’t do much damage (how much biting power can an old man with dentures really have?) but he broke the skin all right. Around me, all hell was breaking loose when they saw the blood. The old man was running around, biting people left and right. Zombies pressed their rotting and bloodied hands against the glass windows at the front of the store. All around me the world was ending, and godammit, I was ending with it.

I could feel myself changing…feel the blood thickening in my veins. You must understand, this is a most crushing disappointment to me; much like being picked off in the first few seconds of a paintball game. I’d wanted to fight zombies, dammit! You think I spent all those hours practicing my marksmanship in video games for nothing? This is truly embarrassing.

You see it’s one thing to die in combat, and another thing entirely to die in the express checkout lane at Stop and Shop.