Hal woke up in a drowsy state; still sprawled out inside the foul smelling dumpster.
“Bloody hell,” he said to himself, it had all been a bitter sweet dream, presumably augmented by the drugs accidentally injected into him earlier. His arm was still stinging.
“That's why I never recalled getting back to my apartment, and never over the last few years I resided there, did I meet a nymphomaniac called Tina living in the block. Probably why that perceived 'reality' had felt so strange!”
He had now fully regained consciousness and the dream was starting to slip away from his memory. Apart from the key details: specifically getting his throat ripped out. Funny how you only remember the bad things.
After a few minutes, he felt confident enough to venture forth back into the apocalyptic world. Opening the lid of the dumpster and retrieving his backpack and baseball bat he climbed out of hiding. One of his favourite phrases, 'Out of the frying pan and into the fire', was surprisingly apt, considering the fetid food smell of the waste lined container he was leaving behind.
On reaching the far end of the alleyway he saw two more zombies, just hanging around near the opening to the main street. "Strike now while the iron is hot," he said to himself and charged recklessly at the pair of zombies. One zombie turned saw Hal and immediately ran off, before even warning its pal. The other zombie looked around in a daze, wondering what the hell was going on!
"A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush," mused Hal, as he disregarded the running zombie and homed in on the stationary one and with a hefty strike of his baseball bat; hit the zombie's chest. Knocking the creature down to the ground, in an unconscious state. As Hal moved away the creature slumped down slowly then collapsed backwards on the grimy floor.
After finding an old tin of spray paint lying around – most likely left by a graffiti artist from before the apocalypse – Hal though whimsically to himself for a moment, then on the wall above the dead zombie, spray-painted the words, 'Zorro Zombie Slayer'.
Moving out into the open street Hal witnessed the mother-load, an entire procession of zombies were walking down the street. Luckily they had not yet caught sight of him, perhaps the strong odour from that dumpster was helping to disguise his presence. Zombies have an incredibly honed sense of smell right...or was that werewolves?
Now was the time to strike. He ran towards the nearest abomination and with a well choreographed swing, he cracked his baseball bat into the creature's skull. The creature was knocked back looking stunned and in a painful state of shock, it then screamed out and ran away from Hal. This action caused something of a domino effect among the rest of the clan, and now the other zombies were running for their lives and screaming. To be honest, Hal would never have expected this reaction when the creatures should have been moving murderously towards him, they were now doing exactly the opposite? The zombies he had seen on television shows or in the movies, never behaved in this manner!
Hal believed it to be his civic duty, to chase after the escaping group and make sure they did not attack any of his fellow human beings (assuming, of course, there were still some humans left within the city). Amazingly only a few hours ago, Hal was a shrinking violet of a man, hiding within his apartment building during the day, only to venture out at night. Now he was hubris incarnate.
Hal ran after the zombies, continuing his unstoppable rampage towards the tail end of the fleeing zombie crowd. They were now approaching a big building at the end of the street and ran inside, seeking refuge from Hal the Zombie Slayer!
A now almost exhausted Hal, followed the zombies into the building. They had managed to outrun him and had made a beeline for the safety of the toilets at the far end of the large room.
Before he could adequately view his surroundings, Hal was miraculously greeted by two human survivors, "My name's Hal and I'm here to save you," said an out of breath Hal.
The unusually smart looking male and female survivors in front of him laughed out loud and to add to Hal's confusion, the prissy looking lady said, "Well indeed, you certainly have been getting into the spirit of things this year!"
"Yes," the distinguished gentleman agreed, "Over all of these years, I have never known people like you, to get so into character. The screams coming from outside were so lifelike!"
Outside wailing police sirens were coming closer and closer. Inside the building, Hal turned around and read the big banner, erected right across the far end wall...
Ironically, Hall won the cosplay prize, just before being arrested and dragged off by the police!