The last hero
From my cage I cannot hear all the details, but the headline is very clear: Norman, one of the last five humans on Earth, died today in Norway. Obviously I did not know Norman, because he lives – lived – very far away from me. All I know is that he was a sixty-years-old guy who liked to hunt. I bet he lost his family when the zombies took the world and made each one of us one of them. I bet he thought he was the last one standing, a lonely hero. I bet and cheer that he killed a thousand zombies. Today, Norman fulfilled his destiny and was killed by a hedgehog while he was fishing. To survive apocalypse and to die because you stepped in a hedgehog is one of those ironies that makes me want to sit and laugh for hours.
Raquel is crying at the other side of the cage. She always cries. She must have heard the news too, but even if she did not she would be crying. Raquel is probably twelve, since just recently she started to show signs of breasts now. I am thirty-two. Raquel cries since she arrived in the cage, in a party day with more than 300 paying zombies around us. There were cameras recording our first contact. Pictures were taken and probably were uploaded at Zombiebook, if there is an even more stupid social network than our own stupid social networks. The Director himself appeared to talk about the expectations that in one or two years I will be the hero that will save humanity.
Raquel did not understand why the group of environmentalists saved her instead of eating her brains. I would have explained if I could speak her language. She did not understand that zombies are nothing else than dead humans, rotting and frozen on time, incapable to understand us. They expect us to reproduce in captivity and our bi-racial babies to be the salvation of the specie. On the fifth day, when the zombies broadcast porn videos in front of our cage, she realized what her role is. Since this day she cries nonstop. I cannot blame her. When she arrived she was around nine years old. She hid on the corner for weeks, too scared to have any contact with the bearded, smelly naked so-called hero that should frenetically copulate with her.
From my cage I cannot hear all the details, but the Security TV broadcast now a long documentary called The Last Humans, starring us. Norman was a Steppenwolf and images of him were rare. There was a huge group of zombies around his house whose only job was to warranty that he could survive in his own particular cosmos, believing that he was far away from any zombie. Some blurred shortages show the man fishing. Another shortage, closer this time, shows a very rare moment of him napping on his porch. Now we see a few seconds video of him, on his house, furiously masturbating. I understand his male need to relief tension. I used to do it from time to time when it was dark, but once Raquel caught me and then she lived another few weeks in pure terror. Her hair is completely white now and she never lost her scared pet look since this day.
The documentary continues, now in Africa. There are two other women alive. One is Carole and the other is Liz. They were friend before the apocalypse and are fifty and forty-three years old, respectively. Unlike Norman they were aware that they are stalked by environmentalists who make sure they are living a good life on their natural habitat. I see scenes of them taking care of the house build for them at Cape Town, surrounded by beautiful gardens. Now I see scenes of them busy in a long kiss followed by fondling followed by mutual eating that culminates with the visceral scream of Liz when she reaches an almost painful orgasm. I feel a monstrous erection and I cover my naked body so Raquel will not realize it. I do not think they are really lesbians, but when you have just five – now four – other humans in the whole world we need to find love and a little bit of consolation at any place.
From my cage I see now images of zombies specialized in humans giving a statement. They are devastated. They try to explain to the population that we are rare and should be preserved. But it is useless, in my humble opinion. Zombies are assholes like humans: they also have intelligence that they do not use; a complex social structure and appetite for destruction. They just forgot their humanity and language, like we should have forgot our past lives, in the minute they were bitten.
The documentary keeps going but now with scenes of Raquel and me in our cage. The more than proud Director speaks to the camera that this is the only zoo in the world with two living exemplars of humans. Cut to some old footage: lines of monsters that pay a little fortune to see us sitting in opposite sides of the cage. Focus on our meals that are basically oysters to make me horny and eggs to make Raquel ovulate. She in the lab sedated while one of these beasts put his fingers inside her vagina, probably ripping her virginity in the process, to check if there is something wrong with her. Myself, also in the lab and also sedated, while my testicles are painfully squeezed. Raquel in tears while scientists paint her face and rub her clit to make her turned on and irresistible to me. The Director ends the interview saying that on me lays the last hope of all our specie to continue, because it would be a pity if such beautiful creatures disappear from Earth.
The Security turns off the TV and says that if humanity depends on a hero like me we are all fucked up. He looks at me and throws a piece of lab-meat – without humans that is what they eat – in my direction. I deflect of this rotten mass for millimeters, while Raquel screams and he laughs even louder. And for the first time since I was captured I sit, bury my hands on my hair and cry. I cry, feeling on me the weight and the terrible loneliness of being the last man on Earth - the hero they can't count on.