I, Zombie

They made fun of her for keeping her clothes in plastic crates, shoved under the bed, the bed she’d raised on cinder blocks to make more room. They’d made fun of her apartment, not quite 400 square feet, and a good bit of that devoted to the end times. They told her to live in the moment, the now. Rhoda had always smiled and kept her thoughts to herself. She knew. She watched the History channel, which was as good as any university, and she learned. She studied. She read all the books, the ones she had to order because the library didn’t carry them.

And Rhoda got ready.

Her sister Charlotte had outed her at Thanksgiving two years back. Charlotte claimed to be worried about her, said she saw the stuff Rhoda was reading, or maybe she’d heard from her friends or spotted the pattern on Facebook. Whatever. She had grown concerned. And so she outed her right there in the kitchen in front of everyone. Rhoda’s mom had been confused.

“I think it’s fine that she dresses nice,” her mother had said, peering into the oven to make sure she didn’t burn the turkey like the year before.

“Prepper, mom,” Charlotte had said, exasperated. “Not preppy.”

Rhoda had argued and felt betrayed as Charlotte explained the differences. But their mother was impervious to either of their worries. While Charlotte stressed about where her sister was putting her money, Rhoda had much larger concerns. She tried to tell them all that could happen, explain to her mother and sister about the Mayans and how their calendar could be read so many different ways, that time could run out tomorrow or maybe ten years later. And didn’t they know New York was due for the Next Big One? Or about the bees and their collapsing colonies? Or how water was running out, and the weather changing? Didn’t they watch the news? Tornados were popping up everywhere. And look at what happened to the dinosaurs. Another impact like that, and every human being alive—

A stab of pain reminded Rhoda of the now, of the moment. It dragged her back from the past with an electrical shock shooting up her bare feet. She wore glass slippers. Glass crunching on glass. Soles embedded with a fine layer of what felt like razors drenched in alcohol. Needles into her heels, the flesh between her toes ripped and burning, glass caught between them and driving between the small bones there. Her feet were being mutilated. It felt like she was hobbling along on bare bone, on the ends of her shins.

The sight of others in shoes drove her mad. How one was shod when they got bit was important. Maybe this was the most important thing. It wasn’t a detail that came up on the History channel, shaking her confidence in that learning institution. Unless she missed that show. Maybe she had. Boots, of course, she owned. Good ones. But she never wore them. They were stowed away in her closet, balls of white paper huddled inside, perfectly safe and snug, protected from the holocaust.

Her closet.

Rhoda imagined someone finding all her gear. The MREs and the jugs of water. Guns she’d only fired the once at a range. Stupid stuff. Before she’d started prepping, before she’d needed to put her bed on cinder blocks to make room, the closet had been full of clothes. It’d been full of shoes and belts and jewelry. Preppy stuff.

Her sister Charlotte had been no different, even back then. Always making fun of how she spent her money. Laughing at her collection of shoes, some of them too painful to even wear, some of them that didn’t go with a thing she owned or a night out she could possibly imagine having. And Charlotte had been right to make fun. Rhoda knew she had a problem. New York was a difficult place for a woman. So many windows full of tempting footwear, so dainty and perfect on their glass stands, beautiful just like that: Empty. Waiting. Footless.

There were shoes that felt perfect off the feet, their straps caught in the pads of her fingers while Rhoda strolled through the great lawn in Central Park. Shoes that looked perfect lying on their sides at the foot of the bed, ready to be donned and seen. Shoes that were wonderful simply in pairs of pairs of pairs at the bottom of her closet, lined up like soldiers. Perfect shoes, just knowing she had them.

But, instead of wearing them out to be seen, she stayed in and watched her little TV. And the shoes ate at her soul. Money wasted. Charlotte’s voice. The end was coming, and she would be caught flat-footed. She wouldn’t be ready. She was wasting her money. Her time. She needed to prepare.