Their feet were what wasted away first. The “gone ones” (as we call them) that were fortunate enough to die with shoes on are the only ones that can manage something that remotely resembles dancing. Although their movements looked incredibly awkward and jerky, I have to admit they were perfectly on tempo. Even the ones that had more bone showing than skin.

They look like a personification of the joke about how white people can’t dance. Maybe that’s not a joke? I’m not white, and people don’t dance in the apocalypse. My Aunt Gatty is the one that told me dancing was even a thing when I was around seven and she also told me that dancing was something happy people did. If there’s one thing I know it’s that’s us survivors definitely aren’t that .

The second you let yourself relax enough to feel any sort of pleasant emotion — BAM! There’s a zombie slurping the blood through your carotid like a straw. Sorry ‘bout your bad luck, kid. Better luck on the undead side!

So here I am, dumbfounded as I watch the decomposed humans skip and sway and I question everything Aunt Gatty ever told me. If only happy people dance then why in damnation are these zombies two-steppin’ and boot-scoot-boogie-in’ through this delapidated stretch of coastal highway? And why do I kind of want to laugh about it?

A siren in my head blares.

DEATH APPROACHING! FROWN! FROWN! FROWN!

I can’t resist. A burst of laughter explodes from my chest and I watch in horror as the horde or gyrating zombies jerk their heads in my direction, twist their still-belly-rolling rotten bodies, and then begin to start shimmying what I think they hope is seductively towards me.

Something happens. I can’t move, can’t run, can’t scream. I’m just stranding there laughing as they crowd around me like a captivated audience. This vibrating circle of smelly corpses watch me as they dance and tilt their heads as if to ask, “Why aren’t you dancing too?”

I don’t understand why they aren’t attcking me. Right as I have that thought skeleton fingers split open my scalp as one grabs my head and yanks my neck back.

I gaze up at the sky and wonder why I didn’t run.

And then I wonder what it will feel like to dance.

And then I find a moment to be grateful I have shoes.

And then I feel teeth tear into my neck.

DJ drop the beat!