I was over at my house when it started. It was something that I’m sure nobody in the entire world was expecting. Nothing, not nukes, not machine guns, nothing could stop this.

My name is Jake, and this is the story of how I survived the Great Purge of 2017.

But it is not the type of purge you would think of. People who spoke spanish called it, “las vacas de los muertos.” If you know spanish, you know what that means. It sadly means, “the cows of the dead.” Yep, this is the story about the zombie cow apocalypse. So let’s get into it already.

***

I was driving home from my normal day routine. I would wake up, drive to the animation organization, animate some videos or video games or something like that, get a paycheck, feel good about how much money I had just earned, realize that it wasn’t a lot of money, drive home, go to bed. But I was stuck at the second to last one on my list. I was sitting in my car, on the highway, stuck in complete traffic, but I did not know why. I turned on the radio to pass some time, and I heard something that would start a whole new phase of my life.

“If you do not get outututut, the-e-e-m leeeeeave!”

The whole station was staticky and messed up.

“Heeeeelp! Moooooooooooo!”

Now it sounded like a sick cow had gotten into the station. Well, that was weird, but the traffic had started moving again, so we were getting somewhere. An hour later, I was walking through the front door of our two story house with my normal end-of-the-day face on. As I turned the knob to the door, a couple of ambulances rushed past my block with their sirens blaring, driving around 60 miles per hour.

There must have been some pretty big mess.

I shrugged and went inside, but something was definitely wrong. Things were misplaced, and that was something that my mother would never approve of. The vase with our new roses was on the floor, broken, instead of on our dinner table. Pictures and paintings on the wall were on the floor or dented. But the weirdest part was how the entire kitchen was completely destroyed. Pots and pans all over the place, the counter was flipped over, silverware was everywhere. Almost as if something big ran through here.

“Mom!!!” I yelled, now suddenly alarmed. “Dad!!!”

What is going on?

I ran upstairs to my parents bedroom, in hopes that they might not have heard me. But as I ran up, I noticed that it seemed like something big had come through here as well. As I ran to the bedroom, I saw that the door was smashed open and in pieces. I slowed down to a walk as I heard screams dying off within the room. As I closed in on the room, I saw something moving around in it.

Then I screamed as I saw what was inside the room, a messed up looking greenish cow chewing on two people who looked familiar.  

My mother and father.

The rest of that day for me was all a big blur. I remember the creature looking over at me and snorting. But if I could remember one thing from that time, it was the way the creature looked. The cow-like thing’s eyes were dead, instead of full of color, blank of expression and dark gray. Its skin was greenish black with rips and tears, and some of it was falling off, as if the creature was shedding its skin.

I remember sprinting out of the room, down the stairs, and out the door as fast as I had ever run. And I kept running, till I couldn’t run any more. I collapsed on hard concrete, on a street I didn’t know. Wiping tears off my eyes, I realized my knee was bleeding like crazy.

I didn’t care.

Just then I passed out.

***

When I awoke, I was greeted by strangers rushing me on a stretcher through the halls of what looked like a hospital, but it wasn’t. I knew this when I saw a truck speed by, to my left, carrying a rather large bomb, which looked to be nuclear. All of a sudden, they shoved me into a room with medical supplies everywhere, and they lifted me onto a bed. Just then, one of the people carrying me took a syringe off a table and stabbed it into my neck. Everything around me started spinning, and my insides felt like they were on the loopiest roller coaster in the world.

I passed out again.

I woke up, this time, to find I was still in the bed with tons of wires and tubes strapped around my body.

I didn’t know what was going on, where exactly I was, what that thing in my house was, or if there were more of them.

But I did know one thing. I was going to get revenge for what it did to my parents.