ZombieCare: A Foreshadowing

Alex Zank

Undergraduate/ Print Journalism

I was in a small, windowless room. The walls, ceiling, and floor that surrounded me were covered in a blank whiteness, void of any color whatsoever. Then the faces started to appear. The old, wrinkly faces seem to twist as their smiles formed with old, wrinkly lips. Their white teeth were all showing. Then they all started speaking. At first it was no more than a whisper. But the volume increased, and the word they kept repeating became coherent.

“Socialism,” they spoke. “Socialism.” The voices were becoming louder. Their tone sounded so incredibly evil. “Socialism,” they continuously barked in their evil voices. Some even started laughing an evil, old howl. Then, right in front of me, his face appeared.

That face was the whitest, his voice the loudest, and his attitude the most disgraceful of them all. It was Rush Limbaugh, smoking one of his cigars. “Socialism!” his voice cried out over the others. He would say the one word more often than and ten times as loud as the others. “Socialism!” his face was getting closer, larger. I couldn’t get away; I was already backed into a corner. “SOCIALIST LIBERAL SCUM! I WANT MY FOOTBALL TEAM!”

I woke up. It was all a dream. But this reality was much worse than any dream consisting of a small room full of rich, old Republicans. It had all started coming back to me. The events of the past few weeks worked their way back into my memory, bit by bit, day by day.

I realized I was in a hospital bed. A nurse had noticed that I had awaken, and rushed out of the room. He quickly reentered, along with a doctor.

“How did I survive the zombie attack?” was the first thing that came out of my mouth. “The last I remember my group was ambushed while trying to get to—“

“You are here, son,” interrupted the doctor.

“You mean I made it?” I was on the verge of tears. “Is this really it? Is this the land of the free and home of the non-zombies?”

“You bet it is, son! This is Canada,” replied the doctor. “Now, can you tell me what actually happened in America?”

I told the doctor all the details. I first said that the outbreak occurred from an unregulated pharmaceutical company that was performing unethical experiments with dangerous bacteria. They had full support of free market idealists. The infection spread like the plague. Only, it was worse than any Black Death. The infection turned its victims into bloodthirsty, brain hungry zombies.

From the start, there was a cure. The only problem was that the drug was incredibly expensive and health insurance companies wouldn’t cover any victims of the disease because they had preexisting conditions. One company explained it this way: “We can’t help it, but the victims were already zombies, so why pay for someone careless enough to become infected? It is their fault they are zombies, and we shouldn’t pay for their irresponsibility.” The cure was never even shipped to most hospitals for that reason.

So naturally, the legislative branch tried passing a bill created by President Obama that would allow every citizen free treatment for zombie infections. The bill died in the Senate as a result of Republican filibustering. They deemed it an “unnecessary expense” and instead wanted a bill that called for a tax freeze, thus allowing everyone to be able to afford the cure with their next paycheck. Zombies invaded the Senate during hour 42 of the filibuster.

As the days went by and the infection spread, many people tried pointing the blame on others. FOX News’s Glenn Beck blamed the outbreak on President Obama. He presented his conspiracy theory to his loyal, lunatic viewers, and pointed out that since the name OBAMA shared the letters M, B, and O with the word ZOMBIE, that the executive branch was behind the whole thing to begin with. Tea Partiers created Tea Safehouses. The gun-clinging occupants only allowed non-zombies and non-liberals inside. The rest were left to defend themselves.

I was fortunate to stay in one of these Safehouses for about a week. I managed to convince the Tea Partiers that I was conservative by saying that I cheered when I heard Chicago would not be hosting the Olympics. I left soon after because I would rather face the zombie hoard than be cooped up with hypocritical brainwashed right-wing extremists.

The last I remembered was running towards the Canadian border along with a group of others. We were attacked by a sizeable force of zombies, and that’s where everything went dark. After telling all this to the doctor, he had to sit down for a while.

“You poor Americans,” said he. “Nowhere else was even attacked by these monsters. It’s a shame to see.”

I asked for alone time, which the doctor granted. After he and the nurse left, I turned on the television to see what was currently going on with the zombie situation.

The news anchor was in the middle of reporting when I got to the channel. He was saying, “And for his efforts attempting to supply the American citizens the cure for the zombie illness out of his own pocket, President Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine. There are people who feel that he is not worthy of his award. For example, Republican Chairman Michael Steele said that he is undeserving of this award since he could not afford enough of the antidote for everyone in the United States.”