Blac and Undead in Canada

Sometimes goodbye's the only way, that's how that famous line from the song 'Shadow of the Day' by my favorite band Linkin Park goes. I can't help but realize that it totally applies to my life, especially now that I'm Undead. Oh, snap. I'm getting ahead of myself again. My name is Omar Abdullah Clarence, my friends call me O.C. and I'm a Detroit dude stuck in Ontario, Canada. I'm trying to get out of this place and go, well, not home but anywhere else, really. Unfortunately, I just can't. Why is that? Well, civilization has recently fallen, traveling has become somewhat problematic and there's that whole zombie infestation thing.

Anyone looking at yours truly would see a six-foot-one, somewhat chubby guy with caramel skin, curly black hair and light brown eyes. A lot of people ask me about my ethnic origins based on my looks, and I always answer the same way. None of your damn business, that's what I tell them. None of their business that my father, Abdullah Abdirahman was a Somali Muslim immigrant who moved to Michigan in the 1980s and my mother, Cheryl Clarence, was a white American Christian woman he met at the University of Michigan. Why does any of that matter? It didn't matter to me while I was alive, and it certainly doesn't matter now that I'm dead. I am not my skin tone, or my parents, or my background. I am only me. Anyhow, I suppose some backstory is in order before we get to the meat of things.

I was born and raised in the City of Detroit, Michigan, and attended Wayne State University. I opted to go spend a semester abroad, and ended up at Carleton University in the City of Ottawa, Ontario. I found myself in awe of Carleton University the moment I got there. For a Canadian school it was surprisingly diverse, I saw so many Arabs, Somalis, Turks, Nigerians and Dominicans, it was pretty amazing. I was still over there, studying civil engineering as an exchange student, when It happened. What do I mean by It? The single most important event of my life. The day I died. You see, one night while hanging around the Rideau Shopping Center in downtown Ottawa, I met a mesmerizing young beauty. I was chilling with my buddies Carlos Armando, a tall, muscular and dark-haired Latino dude from Brazil and Timothy Nguyen, a short and slender, spiky-haired Asian dude. Just three guys at the mall, looking at the pretty ladies.

That's when I saw the woman who took my breath away. Yasmina Aden is the name she went by. You should have seen her, man. Five-foot-ten, curvy and sexy, with light brown skin, long curly black hair and light brown eyes. I've long felt attracted to Somali women, the ladies from my estranged father's community. The fact that my white American mother raised me Christian, Catholic to be exact, kind of posed a problem whenever I dealt with Somali-American girls back in the States. To the best of my knowledge all Somalis are Muslims. If there are Somali Christians or Somali atheists out there they're not broadcasting it. Add to that the fact that Somali chicks were conservative and outwardly meek as a group and you can understand why I found the whole lot of them unapproachable. Yasmina Aden wasn't like the others.

For starters, this broad walked around the most crowded mall in the capital of Canada in a tank top and miniskirt, and she didn't seem to mind when I gawked at her. What can I say? A tall, curvy black chick with a pretty face and a booty, that's my idea of Paradise. Hello stranger, she said, walking up to me when she saw me watching her inside the crowded food court. As salam alaikum sister, I said with a smile. Yasmina looked me up and down, smiled and extended her lovely hand for me to shake. Like the smooth operator I fancied myself to be, I brought her hand to my lips and gently kissed it. Pleased to meet you sister I am Omar, I said.

That's how we met, and that day, we exchanged numbers and began hanging out. Three nights after we first met, I took Yasmina Aden to the Silver City movie theater, where we watched Paranormal Activity : The Marked Ones. I'd seen several movies in the series and had long anticipated this one. Much to my surprise and delight, Yasmina was a fan of horror movies. Totally up my alley, she said, giggling as we snuggled in the back of the theater. Man, I was into her, as you can imagine. I hadn't had much luck with the ladies in Ottawa. I grew up in a chocolate city and for the most part, blacks and whites got along just fine in Detroit. In Ottawa, I could sense the tension between the white population and those they call visible minorities. What's a visible minority? It's a Canadian term describing anyone who isn't white and happens to be within the vastness of Canada.

After the movie, I took Yasmina to grab a bite at a local restaurant. My lovely date didn't eat any of the delicious Italian food I bought for her but she did drink the red wine. I didn't mind because I felt like she was worth it, you know? Looking back, all the clues were right there, in plain frigging sight. A lovely young woman who only comes out at night, doesn't eat, and never goes to the washroom. If that doesn't ring any bells that something's not quite kosher with the lady, nothing will. Of course, I was otherwise occupied. You see, Yasmina was one delicious-looking young lady and I wanted some of that, as they say.

I mean, I'd been in Ontario, Canada, since August and hadn't gotten any booty the whole time I'd been there. Yasmina and I met in January. I'd gone 'thirsty' for a long time. Hell, I even tried to hook up with an escort I found in the back pages of the Ottawa Sun newspaper but she slammed the door on my face when she found out that I was black...and before you go cry racism, the escort who did the deed was Jamaican! I guess that at the time I met Yasmina Aden, I considered her heaven-sent. Finally I had someone to go to movies and restaurants with, someone to hold hands with and kiss. I was lonely in the capital and my loneliness ended the night I met Yasmina.

I was in love with Yasmina, or at the very least strongly infatuated, and I overlooked many facts. Major ones, such as the fact that she never went anywhere in the daytime, claimed to have a mysterious job that she wouldn't tell me about, and had no friends. I mean, how many normal, attractive chicks do you know have zero friends, male or female? Even the bitchiest broad among all the beautiful women on the planet will have at least one gay dude or one fat chick that she hangs out with. Yasmina had none of the above. Oh, and she always used cash whenever we went out. I was beginning to get suspicious and ask her questions, but she silenced me the best way women know how. She slept with me.

Now, when you haven't gotten laid in a while, and you're walking around with balls bluer than the Atlantic Ocean, you lose all thought when you come home one night and find a hot naked chick lying on your bed. Come to me, Yasmina said, and I feasted my eyes on her sexy naked body. Full lips, big natural tits, wide hips, bushy cunt, thick legs, big round heart-shaped ass, and all that jazz. This woman had everything I liked, and then some. I just leapt into bed with her, and we started fucking. Yasmina laid me on the bed, and sucked my dick while I closed my eyes and enjoyed the ride. Man, it didn't take me long to get my nut.

I want you babe, I told Yasmina, once she finished licking every last drop of my cum. You are such a freak, she laughed as she climbed on top of me. I rubbed her big tits together as I thrust into her, licking my lips as I felt her pussy grip my dick. Normally I feel warmth when I've got my dick inside a female but Yasmina's pussy felt cold to me. Not that it stopped me by any means. Gripping those wide hips of hers, I thrust my dick into her, and we began fucking like jackrabbits. Man, we had a lot of fun that night. Yasmina even let me hit it doggy style, and I loved that shit. Pulling her hair and spanking that big brown booty of hers while sliding my dick into her cunt. It was hot, especially since she let me go in raw. We fucked the night away, then fell asleep in each other's arms.

In hindsight, I wasn't the brightest bulb under the tree when it came to women, and I took a lot of unnecessary risks. Using condoms might have prevented what happened next. You see, there's something Yasmina Aden neglected to tell me. The fact that she was a vampire, and one of the oldest of our kind. Indeed, this chick was born in the town of Arabsiyo, in a region now called Somaliland, around 1200 A.D. Yeah, I banged an 813-year-old Muslim female vampire. One fact about vampire life is that if you have sex with one of us, you become one of us. Any blood exchange with a vampire transforms a person into one of the undead. After some pretty amazing sex, I woke up...changed.

I found myself staring at Yasmina Aden, and she was clutching a broadsword in her hands. Oh, and her eyes were red and kind of glowing. What the fuck? I yelped in surprise. Sorry but you must die, Yasmina said, grinning with a mouth full of fangs, then she swung the sword. I blocked the blow with my hand, and the sword cut it off. Howling in pain I went half-mad and shoved my way past Yasmina, slamming her into the wall. Then I leapt out the window. Lucky for me it was about an hour before dawn, otherwise I would have been toast. I ran in the darkness, pursued by Yasmina for she leapt out the window. Bleeding, confused and disoriented, I performed an act I never thought I was capable of. I hailed a cab, and the dude actually stopped for me!

Thus I was able to make my get away. You see, there's something I forgot to mention. There'd been a rash of murders in the newspapers lately. Young men and women found with their heads cut off. The police suspected a serial killer. They were only half right. Yasmina Aden was behind the murders. As I would soon learn, vampires are addicted to sex and violence, and lack self-control. In order to prevent the widespread of the vampire population, Yasmina and others of her ilk kill those human beings they have sex with to stop them from becoming undead. I was about to become just another one of her victims, but luckily, somehow I got away.

I hid in the shed behind some dude's house on Sunnyside Avenue, not far from the Carleton University campus, for I didn't have anything to pay the cabbie with. I was too busy bleeding to grab my wallet. Anyhow, as I was soon to discover, being undead came with some advantages. Remember when I told you that Yasmina cut off my arm while trying to behead me? Well, my arm simply grew back. How cool is that? Man, I don't think even Wolverine could do that stuff, just heal up like that, and I've seen every X-Men cartoon ever made. Spontaneous regeneration is an ability all vampires possess. We can grow back any lost or damaged body part except the head. If you get beheaded it's over. You're toast.

In the months that followed, I struggled to adjust to my new existence as a vampire. Some things I had to let go of, like daytime classes. I took evening courses instead. Not being able to attend Carleton University football games during our team's hope-filled second season was a real bummer, but I did attend one home game on a particularly rainy and cloudy day. I could have gotten fried by the sun during a break in the clouds but I didn't. What can I say? I may be a vampire but I love my school and I love football. A lot of vampires abandon their old existence the moment they join Club Undead. Not me. I still hung out with the same people.

After meeting Yasmina, I kind of stopped hanging out regularly with Joseph and Timothy, which is what a lot of guys do once they get a girlfriend. They drop their buddies. Well, I made it up to my pals once that bitch Yasmina Aden was out of my life. We started chilling regularly, at night of course. When queried about that, I told them that I had a job. I'm a security guard doing the nine to five, I said with a shrug. It's all good bro, Carlos Armando said, as we exchanged dap. At least you're not pussy-whipped anymore my brotha, Timothy Nguyen said. I looked at my favorite Vietnamese-Canadian and laughed. You got it, buddy, I smiled.

Life ( or something like it ) went on. A year went by, and I was fairly well-adjusted to my new existence as a vampire. I only drank animal blood, having sworn not to feed on humans. I reveled in my new abilities as a vampire. I've always been a couch potato, and at six-foot-one and 260 pounds, I was headed for a heart attack fast. Good news is that I became fit after I died. You see, the vampire state changes the human body, and we lose all of our fat, becoming pretty much all muscle. Man, for the first time in my life I'm looking hot...except I'm dead, I have no pulse, and my body is always at room temperature. Got to love the irony.

One of the major things to happen was that Timothy Nguyen and Carlos Armando discovered that I was a vampire. One night, we were hanging out in the woods near Kanata, smoking some pretty good weed and reminiscing about olden times. And then we got attacked by a bear. An actual bear, man. I went full-vamp mode, with my eyes turning red and my teeth morphing into long, wicked fangs. I roared, and the sound that came out of my throat was something akin to what an angry lion might unleash. Whatever it was, it scared the shit out of the bear. It took off like the devil himself was after it. Dude what the fuck was that? Timothy asked. I looked at him, then at Carlos. My two best friends in the world. Hell, my only friends. I got a story to tell you, I said.

I told them the whole shebang, meeting Yasmina Aden, our weird romance, our one and only night of love, my transformation into a vampire, and the shit I've had to deal with since becoming undead. I made it clear to them that I didn't drink human blood. It's not just because of morality that I don't kill people and drink their blood. I'm not sure if as a vampire I can catch AIDs but I'm not taking any chances. I've been warned about that shit for ages for as long as I can remember. When I finished, I looked at Carlos, then Timothy. Neither said anything for a minute. Dude you totally should have used a condom, Timothy laughed. I looked at him, then at Carlos. For sure amigo, I laughed, and then all three of us were laughing, just like old times. Yup, just three amigos. A Black guy, a Vietnamese guy and a Latino dude. One of us is a vampire, but it's no big deal.

Yeah, all was cool between me and my buds. Them knowing that I was a vampire and being okay with it simplified things for me. No more lying, you know? I mean, if you can't trust your buddies, who can you trust? Life, or whatever it is you call a vampire's existence, was finally getting good for yours truly. I met this chick named Marjorie Etienne, a six-foot-tall, curvy and big-bottomed, dark-skinned sister from the island of Haiti. She's studying accounting at the University of Ottawa and has lots of friends at Carleton. We've been out a few times, and she's a lot of fun. So far this church-going sister has kept things platonic between us and that's fine by me because sex would just complicate things. Now, don't get me wrong, I want to smash that, for real. Marjorie has a thick, heart-shaped booty that makes me salivate every time I look at her. However, I don't want to turn her into a vampire.

Yeah, things seemed to be going alright. Switching all my classes to evening hours hadn't been easy but it was totally worth it. Carlos and Timothy got an off-campus apartment with a basement on Bronson Avenue, about five minutes from school. I go there often, for the basement is completely insulated from sunlight. Sometimes I crash there after a wild night. Carlos's dating a new chick, a hot gal named Monica Chang. She's tall, slim and fit, but curvy in the right spots. This exotic beauty is half Asian and half Portuguese, and I think Timothy Nguyen has a thing for her. There's been some tension between them since Monica came along. I wish Tim and Carlos would get past that shit because the last thing we need is a chick coming between us. We're friends for life, and beyond, you know?

At least, that's what I thought. I mean, I'm undead but life can get lonely and I need friends. My parents came to visit me from Detroit once, and it didn't go over too well. The fact that they came together also didn't bode well for their visit. Having clashed throughout their relationship over questions of race, culture and religion, my parents didn't do so well together. Mom noticed my pallor and coldness, and thought I was a drug addict. Dad thought I was unusually close to my pals Tim and Carlos, and accused me of being a fag. Isn't that peachy?

Overall, their visit lasted seventy two hours and it was about as fun as a day-long rectal exam. Actually, make that a day-long rectal exam where you're forced to listen to Justin Bieber songs nonstop. I don't need to breathe anymore but I sighed in relief as soon as they boarded a plane back to the States at the Ottawa International Airport. They went back to Michigan, to continue bickering with their new other halves. Dad's got a new Hispanic girlfriend named Sabrina whom he met at Masjid and mom's seeing a younger guy, Jewish if one were to judge by the last name Rosenthal, probably just to piss him off. As you can see, I totally love my parents. I miss my parents. But it's a good thing there's about a thousand miles separating us. I felt that way about them when I was alive and being undead hasn't changed my disposition. Love you mom and dad, but don't visit too often. Thanks a thousand!

A month after they left, the world ended. Seriously, when the reports about people exhibiting strange behavior began coming in, I was as incredulous as anyone else. Oh, come on. I'm just a guy who happens to be undead, when shit happens I can be caught by surprise just like everybody else. I mean, there's always some emergency going on around the world. I remember the 2010 Haiti Earthquake, and the 2013 typhoon which smashed the Philippines. Now, in the summer of 2015, two years after that dreadful World War Z movie starring Brad Pitt and a ridiculously sexy female action hero whose name I can't remember, the zombie apocalypse actually happened.

The plague began when a virus was unleashed which caused human beings to revert to a primal state where they can't read or write, can't think and reason. Basically, the virus devolved people. After devolving them, it also enhanced their strength and speed, along with their endurance. Take a five-foot-five, 120-pound woman and infect her with the virus. Six hours later she becomes a feral, vicious and absolutely fearless monster that does not feel pain and can toss a 250-pound man through the air like a beach ball. The zombies are real, man. They are stronger and faster than ordinary humans. They don't feel pain. And it takes a LOT to bring them down.

The zombie plague came to everyone's attention when CNN showed a certain video on August 7, 2015. The video showed a horde of zombies swarming over troops in Manaus, Brazil, who attempted to fight them. Any person bitten by one of those things falls into a coma and, six hours later, becomes one of them. At this rate, the infection spread like wildfire. First Brazil fell, and then all of South America. The virus first showed up in Europe on September 19, 2015. A plane from Morocco crashed in Paris, France. It was carrying infected passengers. By September 30, 2015, everyone in Paris was a zombie. The plague first showed up in North America in December 2015. By mid-December, law enforcement and armed civilians in Toronto were battling zombies in places like Calgary, Toronto, Edmonton, Halifax, Montreal and Vancouver. Yeah, man, we were up shit's creek without a damn paddle!

Now, as you can imagine, like everyone else I was panicking. Carlos and Tim kept talking about going back to Colombia and Vietnam to check up on their families. After South America and Asia fell to the zombies, the rest of the world seemed to follow. The last place I heard people were still holding on was the Caribbean. Makes sense now that I think about it. The Caribbean is full of island nations, such as Haiti, Trinidad and Jamaica. These places are sufficiently isolated that they could successfully quarantine themselves. I mean the only way into those places are by plane and by boat, and the Haitians, Jamaicans and others were quick to shut down all entry into their countries once they realized the rest of the world had become hell.