The Zom Zom Chronicles Chapters 60 and 61: The Government Cheese & the Inspector Who Was Already Inside
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Mood: Caffeinated and confused
Status: Holding a ringing phone duct-taped inside a government crate
Let me reset the scene, because it deserves the full cinematic treatment. A parachute crate in our courtyard. Stenciled PROPERTY OF DOD — DO NOT OPEN. Labeled RE: COMPLAINT #0001 — THE CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS RIGHT. Addressed ATTN: THE CHEESE GUY.
And ringing. A phone, ringing, from inside the crate.
Dave dropped the Nerf gun — v3.1, +12% morale, now holding at +0% morale — and sprinted for the fort-inside-the-fort on the MRAP roof. And Mister Whiskers, our Facility Morale Officer, the one creature who has never once flinched in 59 chapters...
Flattened his ears.
It took a ringing government crate to rattle the one being I was certain was running this whole apocalypse as a side hustle.
There is no complaint-resolution protocol. She invented it on the spot. I watched her do it. She wrote it on the clipboard and everything. "Documented," she said, underlining it twice.
We pried the lid. The phone was duct-taped to the underside, still ringing. And beneath it — shrink-wrapped blocks. Golden. Stacked like bullion. Glowing faintly in the morning light like the world's most patriotic treasure chest.
Government cheese.
ATTN: THE CHEESE GUY. The Department of Defense sent the ex-cheese-blogger a complaint-resolution gift basket. Of government cheese. I have never felt so seen, and so insulted, in my entire life.
Brenda rated the apocalypse two stars. "Response time: slow. Robocall frequency: excessive. Would not recommend." She logged the cheese as Morale Asset #0048 and filed the survey under External Feedback — Adverse, But Dairy-Positive.
Then Mister Whiskers did the thing. One blink. Approval.
One blink. The cheese is approved. We are now officially a dairy-based economy.
Brenda was THRILLED. An inspection! She broke out the binders — plural — and started issuing assignments like a general who'd been waiting her whole life for a war she could win with laminated tabs.
The Local 404 Perimeter Wellness Patrol polished their RATIFIED signs. Assistant Brenda prepped the gate kiosk with fresh visitor badges and a new wet-X pen. Joe developed the "Inspector's Blend" — triple shot, tastes like accountability. And I was put in charge of the cheese display: a cheese tower in the courtyard, "to project dairy confidence."
Evening fell. Route 9: empty. The night shift reported all clear. C.A.R.E. performed its 2:47 AM wellness check anyway, because C.A.R.E. does not care about your schedule. Nobody slept. Except Buster.
Mood: Performance-review nausea
Status: Standing at attention
Dave filed Incident Reports #215 through #227 in a single day. Highlights include #219: "Inspector has not arrived. Suspicious." and #224: "Inspector STILL has not arrived. Extremely suspicious." He is now the all-time incident-report champion of Local 404, and the colander has never gleamed brighter.
Joe's Inspector's Blend is on its fourth test batch. Joe is vibrating at a frequency that worries the seismically stable. Brenda has rehearsed her opening statement: "Welcome to Annex Delta, a synergistic survival collective operating at 104% morale efficiency."
The cheese tower sweats gently in the sun. Mister Whiskers sits atop the Fort of a Thousand Cushions in full gargoyle mode, watching Route 9. Nothing moves. Except Buster, who relocates six inches to the left "for tactical reasons."
The sun went down. No convoy. No helicopter. Not even a strongly worded drone. Brenda's smile tightened one notch per hour, and by dusk it could have cut the government cheese.
"Perhaps the inspector is... running late," she said. "Traffic."
The crate phone. Still sitting on the crate lid in the courtyard. Ringing.
I answered on speaker. A flat, tired, very human voice — the first human voice we'd heard in days that wasn't selling us something or filing us somewhere.
We ran. The gate stood open. At Assistant Brenda's kiosk, the visitor log showed a fresh wet X. On the counter lay a visitor badge, still warm. It read:
"DOD INSPECTOR — CLEARANCE: ALREADY INSIDE."
And from the dark window of the manager's office: two yellow eyes. Mister Whiskers blinked.
Twice.
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