Zombies in a jacuzzi

You know when you go to the swimming pool, and you get to the jacuzzi, and there are already people in there…and you don’t know them?

That’s my life, every time I go to the pool after work. I don’t know anyone, but I do like jacuzzis, and so I brave that awkward moment where everyone looks at you getting in (it’s not the most fantastic of views is it, that looking upwards at someone in a swimsuit thing, generally speaking) and then they quickly look away and pretend they are asleep, or really interested in the third tile to the left, or whatever. A bit like going on a tube journey really, except with less clothing and more water.

Anyway, that didn’t happen this week.

This week, I got into the jacuzzi, and the guy next to me said ‘hello, how are you?’

What I was, is massively surprised. But I do like chatting to random people so I said I was much better for getting in the jacuzzi, and he agreed that jacuzzis are indeed good for the soul. Then he asked me what I’d been up to that day.

‘Well’ I said ‘I’ve just finished reading a really good book on my kindle all about the aopocalypse’. After I said that, I realised how weird that potentially sounded.

‘I love zombies!’ he said. Turns out, he reckons he’d be a real ladykiller in the very literal sense of the word. He has visions of vast hordes of zombie children, all fathered by him as the ultimate zombie overlord.

The book I’d read was actually about a solar flare from the sun that generated a massive electromagnetic pulse and took out electricity of the entire developed world in one fell swoop, but I’m always up for a zombie conversation so I switched over to talking about the zombie apocalypse instead. I’m pretty sure I would NOT be a good zombie. I’d be one of those crap, slothlike ones that hides under a pile of leaves and just grabs at you aimlessly as you try and escape with your life. So that’s what I said. At which point, the third occupant of the jacuzzi piped up.

‘It really depends on the type of zombie’ he said. ‘If they’re the kind that are really slow and its easy to run away, you just need to outrun them and then hide and wait for them to die’.

But see, I’m not so sure about that. It never seems to work for people in the movies, or the books. I’m pretty certain they’d take longer to die than the amount of food, water and safe shelter I have available. So again, that’s what I said.

And then, the fourth occupant of the jacuzzi joined in.

‘Well I’d be alright’ he said ‘because my son is obsessed with zombies and I’m ex-military’,

Thing is though, its all very well being ex-military and knowing how to use a gun (and I’ve shot a few guns fairly accurately in my time) but if you don’t happen to have any guns, and more importantly, a lot of ammunition, then knowing how to shoot a gun isn’t really that useful a skill. And it’s also quite loud, which means attracting more zombies, until you end up with a dead zombie mountain with more and more zombies pouring over it… and then we’re back to the ‘lets just be zombies ourselves’ thing.

‘Doesn’t matter’ said jacuzzi guy number 4 (he does have a name, I can’t remember it, I know he works in IT and finance though) ‘I would just go to the nearest army base and get some. They have massive, massive stockpiles of it’

‘and massive stockpiles of troops also wanting to use the ammunition?’ I suggested.

‘doesn’t matter, I can take ’em’ he said.

So that zombie thing, where you become a zombie when you die by other means? I reckon he’ll be one of those zombies. I am not convinced the army would take kindly to ammunition thieves in the zombie apocalypse.

At this point, I realised that there were quite a lot of people crammed into the second jacuzzi, and they were all looking at us a bit weirdly. Jacuzzi guys 1, 2 and 3 were completely oblivious to this, and I just didn’t care, so we carried on chatting.

The following agreements were made:

• If the zombies are fast zombies, then you may as well just give in and become an awesome, fairly intact zombie yourself. Have some zombie fun!
• If the zombies are slow zombies – the Shaun of the Dead type I’m thinking here – then find a cruise ship, go for a cruise, have a hell of a good time, and then come back when the zombies are all dead. And MAKE SURE THAT no-one on the cruise ship is a zombie, otherwise confined environment = ship full of zombies.
• Baseball bats with spikes are your friends
• Before the zombie apocalypse, make friends with a medic, an engineer, a farmer, an electrician, and someone who can cook well with random ingredients and very little useful equipment.
• Make sure you rescue the above friends, and take them with you, in the case of slow zombies. Otherwise form a really awesome zombie horde.
• Generally speaking, try not to talk about zombies in a jacuzzi.

‘So, that book I read, well it wasn’t about zombies, it was about an EMP’ I said, once we’d reached agreement on all the above points.

‘An EMP? Well, I’d make sure I had everything wrapped in foil’ said Jacuzzi Guy 3.

And so it continued…