It was Saturday morning and I was on the way to my English student’s house in Maribyrnong, a suburb in Melbourne’s west. I’ve been doing this recently, been helping him get his licence, we’ve been meeting at his house first and then driving to school once his wife had plied me with enough fruit and juice and tea. It was a wet and green morning, trees dripping, the rainwater collecting in the imperfections of the footpath and road. The Maribyrnong river was deep and reflective and swollen clouds moved away east. The streets around me were deserted and I found myself in front of a modest community hall, maybe built around the 1930s or 40s and long ago it might have held the Saturday night dances of the working-class. Low-pitch noises from within attract me, conversation that’s heard through solid walls. Forgetting what I was doing I investigate, walking around the building to locate an open door: I enter. The hall has been converted into an unpresumptuous Buddhist temple, reds and yellows; monks sit on cushions in what I assume is quiet contemplation. I am noticed. Their faces turn and I am hit with montage of dead faces: pale and sunken, blood clotted beneath the surface skin. In George Romero style I am surrounded by the living dead, zombie Buddhist monks moving towards me, grasping mindlessly.
The sun was hidden by cloud and the day grew dark and I found myself running along a strip of shops, all closed, all abandoned, pursued by an increasing number of these creatures, climbing out from the edges of my imagination at the prospect of new flesh. I am grabbed from behind and dragged into one of the nearby shops (perhaps an old milkbar or spice shop) and I am surrounded in this blacked-out store not by zombies but by four or more women, short but well built women who exude confidence and competence. I am told in eastern European accents, maybe Polish, maybe Greek, Russian and even Italian that the plague of undead is not as it seems. There are forces at work whose expressed intension is to push the old residents out of the west. “Gentrification my darling,” one said. “You must have noticed the new development going on around, land prices are skyrocketing out here. It’s housing for the rich well-to-do and they want the old residents out!” Perfect symmetry to have some succumb to the horror of zombiism and leave the rest to be consumed, devoured, and eaten by their neighbours.
The women drag out an old fire extinguisher with a hand pump used to build pressure. “We’re not going to abandon them, our friends, our neighbours and we’re not going to kill them either. So forget decapitation. We have devised a cure instead darling. The cure is alcohol based and all we need to do is spray it on the zombie and pow!”
At this point I woke up.
postscript: while some artist licence has been taken (such as the dialogue) the events portrayed are as good as I can remember them.
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