SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA - OCTOBER 24: A man dressed as a zombie sits next to a woman on a park bench during the Sydney Zombie Walk on October 24, 2010 in Sydney, Australia. The Sydney Zombie Walk saw participants travel a route through the business district starting and culminating at Sydney's Hyde Park. (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)For the first exercise in Apathy we had to write a short inspired by the story Orientation by Daniel Orozco. My first attempt at this did not go well. After writing the first and second exercises, I felt that I should reverse the order, because what I wrote for the second exercise worked better than the first one did.The hunger was intense, so intense it blocked out everything else. I no longer cared about anything. Bills did not matter. Love and friendship are nothing to me. I ate my best friend. She temporarily stalled the hunger. I ate my dogs; they did nothing for the hunger. That was when I knew only the flesh of the living humans would cure my hunger pangs.
I still tried to eat animals from time to time as it became harder and harder to find humans who do not suffer the same condition as I. I tried to bite one once; it was horrible. The flesh of infected or dead just makes me feel ill. The only thing that matters is finding the living and eating them.
I spot two other infected, one of them is missing an arm. They are both heading in the same direction. Maybe they know where some people are. I shamble after them. Soon others join us, all of us are heading in the same direction. There must be people, why else would we all be heading this way.
We walk forward until we hit a wall. We continue to walk forward. I am being crushed in the crowd, but I don’t feel anything. All that matters is walking forward to get to the food. The armless one falls after the loud crack of a gun. I knew that there were people here. I walk forward. My skin scrapes the hard concrete wall. Two more fall to the gun.
There is a loud crashing sound as a vehicle crashes through a gate. I turn to follow it. I walk and walk. Even though I don’t know where it has gone or where I am going, I walk. The endless hunger forces me to hunt until the end.
