Wake up, wake up... wake up with the Sickness!

Woke up Friday morning in a horrendous coughing fit, muscles aching and the vein in my temple visibly throbbing. My Better Half was sitting besides the bed on the creaking office chair before my computer, ginger stub-tailed cat in the lap and her Glock pointed straight between my eyes with steady hands.

"I'm sorry Sweetcheeks, but I think you must've caught the Zombie Flu that's been goin' around," she smiles bittersweetly and blinks the emerging sunlight from her eyes.

Thoughts evaporate under the heat of the fever haze but I still manage to retain enough consciousness to formulate a basic question: "B'how? I didn' get bit, 'member?"

"One of them sneezed on you," she sighed and shook her head slowly.

"B' z'bies don' sneeze!"

"Oh no...," she shakes her head sadly at me and points the Glock instructively towards the window behind me, before training the pistol back on me. I summon the strength to turn around and look where she pointed. Framed within the window's pane are a dozen eyeless faces pressed against the glass. Patches of bubbling jaundiced skin have grown over their sockets and from skeletal noses, where the flesh had long peeled away, they sneezed uncontrolably away releasing a oozing pea slime that began to slowly dissolve the window.

"Honey," the Better Half asks, "do you want me to finish you off now or wait until you've had some breakfast?"

"We stuhl g'pancakes?"

She shakes her head no and bites down on her lower lip: "No... the cat had them for dinner last night."

"O y'h, tha's righ'... wuhl, g'ess now's fine then."

She blows me a kiss, the cat hops off the lap, the windows at the dead faces at the window all become mute and she squeezes the trigger.


***

The fever races my vision to be the first to greet my consciousness and wins by a split-second. Pain flares between the skull and light floods the corridors of my awareness. All white blurs and gray shadows.

"Had the strangest dream, Baby...," I turn over but she's long left for work already. Only the cat, curled up on the adjacent pillow and staring at me with naked scorn, remains to hear my confession.

"Never mind." And I turn back around to stare at the ceiling.

It's Friday morning and I have no idea yet that that will have been the last time I would sleep for longer than two consecutive hours over the coming weekend.

Apocalypse (S)now

"... coming up next on ATL23 Impulse News: The National Weather Service predicts a 57% chance of Frost Giants storming through the Metro Area by morning, see how it'll effect your commute. Plus, reports of carniverous Snow Angels attacking downtown residents. Will your family be next? But first we go to Bob, who has some bad news for Eagles fans."

"Thanks Mary, as we can see, Aaron Rodgers simply dominated the field with three touchdown passes to lead the Packers to a 21 - 16 victory over Michael Vick and the Eagles. Which is bad news for Eagles fans... but really bad news for Vick, who, as you know, will now be sacrificed to a pack of ravenous wolves in order to appease, and I quote the press release from the office of Governor Sonny Perdue, 'the Angry Sky Gods who Make Cold fall on Georgia.'"

"Not a good end for the seaon for Vick, is it, Bob?"

"No, Mary, I should say not. But then I for one hope the Angry Sky Gods will be pleased with Vick's thoroughly mauled corpse and perhaps take pity on the rest of us, so we won't be forced to devour our young while waiting for the long, harsh winter to thaw."

"We can only hope, Bob... we can only hope. Now, Dan Butler with the Accu-Storm Tracker. What have you got for us, Dan?"

"Wellll, as you can see Mary, with an estimated snow fall in North Georgia expected to reach several inches, the Social Contract has been called off in the Greater metro area, along with surrounding Gwinnett, Lynch, Shoeless and White Hood Counties. Mob rule is in effect in these areas and residents are strongly encouraged to live as beasts amongst their neighbors until only the strong survive."

"Good advice as always, Dan. Alright, next... is that ominous shape hovering outside your window a carniverous Snow Angel or just an angry Frost Giant? Stay tuned when ATL23 Impulse News returns."