Colorado Zombie Cops: The Reckoning

Late 2010. The days grow shorter and the air holds a bitter chill. And here, in Colorado, the end has already begun. It started here. And for many, it ends here.

Brandon Duke blew the whistle, but it was too late, and the powers that be would have none of it. Even with the end in sight, no one wanted to look foolish. No one wanted to take the blame. They called him crazy. They put him on trial. And all because he shot a cop. A zombie cop. Damn.

The zombie cop experiment was meant to make Colorado a safer place to live. Cops that can’t be killed would be invaluable. They could go where living officers could not, do things living officers could not do. The perks were seen to be endless. An undercover zombie agent could freely test drugs without fear of adverse effects. They could wear wires literally inside their rotting flesh so a pat down would reveal nothing. They could get shot fairly regularly and didn’t require lunch breaks, didn’t care about unions and could be stored in lockers while the floor cleaners came through the building. They were perfect. Or so it seemed.

At first there were little problems. Zombie cops wrote nearly illegible tickets. K9 cops would occasionally have their legs chewed off by the dogs. At least once a week a suspect in custody would get his throat ripped out and everyone acted like they didn’t know how it happened. Holding cells filled up with zombie drunks and zombie hookers. On weekends, zombie dudes who went down on other dudes at highway rest stops formed lines out the door.

Turns out there was an issue with zombie cops that no one had foreseen, and no one could have predicted, assuming they all lived in the same sort of “I’ve never even conceived of the idea of the walking dead so I have no idea how to react to them” universe all characters in zombie movies seem to come from – zombies eat people and make more zombies. Shit.

Brandon tried to shoot that zombie cop that was chasing him down an alley, but he was still caught. It was one of those fast zombies. They’re the worst. Romero zombies have an understated sort of pride in their aimless, drunken shamblings. These new fangled running zombies though…man. I just don’t know. It’s not usual, you know?

While Duke waited for his trial, the city of Boulder fell apart around him. Asshole zombies went from zombifying criminals to zombifying meter maids, lawyers, judges and court reporters. It ballooned from the legal profession out to all civil servants, food services, health care, education and eventually even the porn industry succumbed. The Colorado porn industry was just making a comeback, too. The ensuing zombie porn was so awful you’d think it had been filmed in Wyoming.

The streets were littered with the refuse of a society gone mad – crashed cars, fires, Starbucks cups and unwanted zombie porn. The zombie cops branched out to the State Police, the FBI and a handful of game wardens who proceeded to make zombie deer, beavers and raccoons. Once the zombeavers migrated to Canada the whole country fell and migrated back to the US as overly polite zombies with ridiculous accents and hockey hair. That was the shit hitting the fan moment, as few Americans are capable of being intimidated by Canadians, and thus many were eaten in record time.

By the time we were able to get organized and try to mount a defense, the situation was grim. Every time you turned around there was another zombie. You’d go to hug grandma and she’d bite your ear off. You’d make out with your mother-in-law and lose your tongue. You’d sit on Santa’s lap and elves would eat everyone in line behind you. Then you. They were everywhere.

Now humanity exists in isolated pockets. We have infrequent radio contact and some cities haven’t sent message in ages. We try to keep busy, day to day work to survive, but it’s hard when beyond the walls armies of zombies wait for us, and every now and then it turns out the stripper you’re watching is actually undead, so when you slip a $20 into her g-string she leans over and tries to bite you and everyone else thinks she’s just frisky so they don’t try to help and then you turn into a goddamn zombie and you head to work the next day at a Kinko’s and people are asking for copies of posters with missing dogs and you realize you ate that dog before work this morning but you don’t want to say anything for fear of being shot in the brain but at the same time the guy asking for the posters looks super delicious, so you’re thinking maybe when you hand him his change you could super quick pull his arm off and it’ll be just like a Band-Aid and he won’t even notice, but then it doesn’t happen that way at all and before you know it you’re f*cked.

Ah well. Sucks. Damn zombie cops.