Even as a child, Jeremy Shrier was big. His mother affectionately called him "her little couch potato," smoothing his hair back as she brought him another helping of mac and cheese. But it wasn't just baby fat and poor diet choices; hereditary Cushing's Syndrome left him with a ravenous hunger that never seemed to end. By six, he was overweight. By eight, obese. At ten, morbidly obese. By his twenties, he was super obese, spending almost every waking moment planted on his couch, the springs long since crushed into a permanent indentation.
In his thirties, Jeremy became a complete shut-in, trapped by 600 pounds of flesh and lethargy. When his mother passed away, it left him truly alone. The living room became his entire world, tended by his visiting nurse who checked his vitals, shaved him, and gave the many places he could not reach a sponge bath, and delivery drivers who brought his groceries and tried not to look as they suppressed a mingled mix of pity and revulsion.
He never looked into a mirror to see himself. The closest he came was his reflection in the darkened TV screen. Seeing the pale lump in a 10 XL undershirt staring back at him was bad enough, so the TV always stayed on, letting the hours blur together in an endless stream of reality shows, cable news, and infomercials.
And when the dead began feasting on the living, nothing changed. He watched the world end from his TV, his only protection a dusty .38 revolver resting beside the remote—a relic from the father he had never known, other than his mother's description of him being a 'no good bastard.'
The news showed the chaos spreading from the major cities to the minor, washing over the suburbs and seeping into the countryside.
Jeremy watched it all through a haze of anxiety, constantly adjusting his oxygen mask, never feeling like he was ever getting enough air. His nurse never showed up. The delivery drivers stopped delivering food.
The talking heads debated causes—maybe it was a virus, a prion, something alien and entirely undefined, or perhaps it was just divine punishment—until one by one, the channels went dark, and only the emergency broadcast system remained, its monotone warning becoming white noise as Jeremy drifted in and out of consciousness.
When the power cut out, chaos came to his neighborhood. Sirens wailed in the distance. Gunshots cracked, seemingly drawing closer each time. It lasted for three days, followed by a far worse silence—hours passed with nothing he could do but stare at the scared lump on the darkened screen and long to hear the sirens again. Their wail meant there was a response—somebody who might still save the day. The silence only grew heavier, more oppressive, until even the familiar whir of his oxygen concentrator felt deafening, and each creak of his settling house had him jumping out of his skin.
Then a thunk came from the bedroom as something bumped into the window. Another impact followed, louder this time, deliberate. Jeremy tried to turn around, his neck straining against his poor spine and rolls of fat. He could just see his open bedroom door in his periphery. With a crash, the window shattered. He grabbed his oxygen mask, hyperventilating through the plastic.
Something tumbled onto the floor in the next room. He grabbed his walker and tried to stand for the first time in weeks, his knees popping under the weight, legs trembling before he collapsed back onto the couch, the cushions squeaking in protest.
The thing in the bedroom crawled, scraping across the broken glass on the floorboards until it rose to its feet with a raspy moan. Jeremy fought to turn his body, sweat dripping from his forehead as he caught a glimpse of the intruder in the corner of his eye—a gaunt, decaying figure stumbling out of the bedroom. The creature wore the tattered remains of a jersey and its own torn flesh, and Jeremy felt a pang of recognition.
It was Mike. Mike, the mailman who'd brought his packages for years, was always willing to take the time from his busy route to come inside and hand-deliver them so Jeremy didn't have to get up. They would have small talk about what they watched on TV. He was the only person Jeremy ever considered a friend.
Desperation took over. Jeremy raised his revolver, blind-firing over his shoulder.
BAM! A picture frame exploded—his mother's smiling face disappearing in a shower of glass. The thing that had been Mike lurched closer.
BAM! The doorframe splintered. It was almost on him now—six claws on two mangled hands reached out, strips of flesh hanging from exposed bone looking like a mostly eaten chicken wing.
BAM! The bullet ripped through its chest, but it didn't stop. It didn't even stumble from the shot.
Jeremy screamed as the corpse grabbed hold of his shoulder and fleshy upper arm with inhuman strength, fingernails popping into his flesh, grip ripping those holes wide open. Teeth sank deep into his shoulder and clenched shut with a pneumatic press's slow, steady, unstoppable inevitability.
His right hand fumbled for the gun, but his stomach blocked him. With a whimper, he switched to his left, pressed the barrel against the thing's forehead, and squeezed the trigger.
BAM! Mike crumpled to the floor behind the couch, taking a chunk of Jeremy's flesh with it.
For a moment, Jeremy just gasped, wide-eyed, heart pounding. Then the pain set in. He dropped the gun and tried to clutch at his torn shoulder, but his arms were too heavy, his breath too shallow. He lay a towel over the wound, grabbed his oxygen mask, and struggled to breathe.
His blood pressure meds ran out days ago. His heart wasn't strong enough to keep up with the adrenaline rush. A sharp pain shot through his chest, spreading like wildfire into his left arm. His vision blurred, and the room began to spin as he felt his heart shudder and choke.
He took a final breath, the taste of copper filling his mouth. Then the mask fell from his face as he exhaled his last. His eyes went unfocused as the darkness seeped in, and his last sight was the reflection on the dead television of the pale lump, dying alone on the couch.
***
Hours passed. Silence crept into the house as the outside began to glow with the dull morning light. Outside, a few neighbors shuffled by, oblivious to the drama that unfolded within. The world had changed, but Jeremy's little corner remained oddly peaceful.
A teenage girl missing half her face followed the blood trail of the first intruder and crawled through the shattered window. She staggered into the living room and fell upon Jeremy in a bear hug, teeth sinking into his bloated stomach before pulling back. The meat tasted off, sour with the beginnings of decay. It fell from her mouth, and she turned away, uninterested. Mindlessly, she wandered through the small house, searching for nothing in particular, before a dog's bark outside caught her attention. She snarled and crashed through another window, leaving the remainder of her face smeared on the glass shards.
Inside, Jeremy's body twitched. His head lolled, and his pupils moved—nothing more than dull, lifeless orbs. Slowly, he turned toward the window, spotting the neighbor's Black Lab. It was barking, keeping its distance from the shambling girl that used to feed and take him for W-A-L-K-S. Jeremy's body tried to move, muscles and bones cracking under the strain.
The dog ran off, and the Couch Potato sank back into the couch—exactly where he'd always been and where he would forever stay.
The undead corpse of Jeremy Shrier operated on instinct—stimuli triggering the occasional firing synapse in his barely functioning brain. Reduced to the most basic commands, his existence ran on three simple IF-THEN statements:
IF the corpse heard something or saw erratic movement, THEN it moved toward it. Strategizing was out of the question; obstacles like an unlocked closed door might as well have been a brick wall.
It's why the nearby elementary school became a gathering place for the neighborhood, drawn in by the rhythmic clanging of a steel cable slapping against the flagpole. The fluttering flag, caught by the wind, was quite the local attraction. Dozens would shuffle toward the noise, forming a writhing circle around the pole. Occasionally, one would fall and get trampled into a mess of bone and pulp. But not Jeremy. His 580 pounds—down about 30 pounds from decompositional water loss—remained glued to the couch, his head occasionally lolling toward the window to follow a bird or a squirrel with dull interest.
IF something was made of meat, THEN the corpse would attempt to eat it. This was why greetings among his neighbors involved the casual exchange of bites. However, they never tore off more than a mouthful before moving on because of the final statement: IF the meat was cold or tasted wrong, THEN the corpse left it alone. Their bites were usually shallow, enough to press the tongue against the flesh to confirm that the moving thing wasn't food.
Many of Jeremy's undead neighbors came by to visit, crawling through the broken windows. Never the front door—The dead always followed the paths of least resistance. Each one gave him a little bite, and if he could manage, Jeremy returned the favor. Once both sides confirmed neither was fresh, the visitor hung around for a while, then wandered off through a window when something caught their milky, lifeless gaze.
Jeremy had never been so popular in life, and over time, his body in undeath became riddled with these meet-and-greet love bites
Pests had always been a problem for Jeremy when he was alive. A drumstick out of reach of his grabber stick would attract an army of ants, flies, or mice, but he was too large to do anything about it. The pests still swarmed; only now, Jeremy himself was the food.
The plague stewing in his corpse secreted chemicals akin to formaldehyde, slowing his decomposition and making his flesh toxic. Flies would feast on him, laying eggs in his wounds. But the maggots wouldn't last long, dying off from the toxins shortly after hatching, and the flies that laid them dropped mid-flight and steadily littered the floor.
Rats occasionally took a nibble, but Jeremy took a nibble of them as well whenever his slow, fumbling hands managed to snatch one. His stomach no longer functioned, so the half-eaten rodent chunks just ended up rotting inside him, bloating him with gas until the occasional putrid burp slipped out. The rats he couldn't catch often succumbed to the toxins just a few feet away, and as the years passed, it left a fairy ring of dead rodents around his couch.
Then, one day, something different happened. For the first time in years, a visitor came not through the window, but through the front door.
TO BE CONTINUED
Wow, Jeremy is one unlucky couch potato. Your descriptions really put me right in the middle of this chaotic world, Kevin. I’m enjoying this and I’m on to the next part. I hope something good happens to Jeremy somewhere along the way. Thank you for sharing.