War Pig jumped up. “That is so not funny.”
Nero kept going, walking into the TV lounge where Sad Girl and Estrada were lying on the couch.
“Oh, no,” Sad Girl said.
“You kicked it off again, eh?” Estrada asked, looking into Nero’s eyes.
“I knew it,” Sad Girl said, throwing her magazine on the floor. “Cupcake’s plan. Cut a hole in the door and let it happen, right? Join the other team and you are the other team?”
“Yes.”
“But I like it here. When we got our release dates, I was even gonna ask if we could stay for extra rehab.”
Nero looked at Estrada. “You too?”
“If she wants, yeah. We got good food, free rent, our own room. Man, people here care what happens to us. They get it. No one out there cares, do they?”
“No,” Nero said.
“That’s right. Never did. What do I got waiting for me on the streets? Empty time until I get arrested again.”
“No more arrests. Time starts. Now.”
“No.” Sad Girl said.
“Babe?” Estrada said.
“Babe what?”
“Be cool.”
“Cool? Are you shitting me?”
Estrada held out his hand.
Nero bit it.
Sad Girl closed her eyes and raised her arm. Nero leaned over. At the last second she pulled back and ran into the bathroom.
“She’ll come around,” Estrada said, admiring the wound Nero had left. “Women, huh?”
“Yeah,” Nero was barely able to say. “Wu-man.”
They bumped knuckles.
“I believe in you, Fiddler. And now the city is most definitely burning.”
“Burning,” Nero said.
Estrada laughed and then walked toward the art studio.
A counselor tried to stop him and got molars for his trouble.
Hollow-point rounds ricocheted down the hall.
Screams rained down from above.
Nero felt a clanging in his head, the madness, coming on like the first rush of unheard music or some unnameable drug. But it was fine and high and tight. It was static, a ball of energy, stomach hollow, face stolen. New parts of him were opening, like a stack of tiny presents, ribbons being pulled off one at a time, as other parts closed.
Voices rumbled, low and insect-like.
The first inklings of communication.
Communion.
War Pig shuffled by, a smile on his face. Tripper followed, slick head gleaming. Cupcake held her arms out, beatific. Mr. Bator, a look of release in his eyes, sank himself into the cafeteria lady.
Nero figured it would take about an hour until the facility and everyone in it had turned. Some would be out of control, but eventually he would lead them. As Swann had. Like Joanjet was doing. In the mountains.
He would teach them that it wasn’t a virus; it was a blessing.
That they weren’t a mindless horde; they were an army.
With no agenda and nothing to lose.
Except a culture that had been lost a long time ago.
The future in the rearview.
Darwin with a twist.
There was commotion around the front offices. Men shouting instructions, yelling over handheld radios. Gunfire. A guard ran by, armed with a shotgun. She stopped, staring at Nero. It was the female soldier. The major who’d shot him in the clearing by the lodge. There was a bite on her chin, a chunk of flesh hanging free. Blood dripped slowly to the floor.
“Are you turned?” she asked.
Nero shrugged. “Is there. A difference. Anymore?”
Static squalled through her shoulder radio. She cursed, racked more shells, and ran down the hall.
Nero went in the other direction, took the long way, avoiding the commotion.
The next wing was empty.
By the time he came to the end, there was no one guarding it at all.
He knocked on the pane of safety glass.
Nothing.
He did it again. Louder.
Nothing.
He closed his eyes and thought, Wake up!
Swann’s eyes flickered open.
She yawned and stretched.
Then turned her head.
And winked.
An alarm went off, and then another.
Klaxons reverberated across tile floors.
The sprinklers engaged.
There was yelling.
Crying.
Chaos.
Nero stood there, getting wet.
Getting wetter.
Getting clean.
Swann ran a hand through her hair, tore IVs from her arm, pulled magnetic leads from her chest, leather restraints from her neck, and the red plastic gag ball from her mouth.
Then charged the plate glass and slammed against it.
“Hi,” Nero said, although it may have sounded like “Ngurrgh.”
Swann raised her hand to smash at the glass, then stopped and raised an eyebrow instead.
“I’ll be back,” he said, walking slowly down the corridor.
Trying not to shamble.
And succeeding.
As soon as they got out of the facility, Nero and Sad Girl and Petal and Estrada were going to load into the Celica. Maybe put Swann in the trunk. Roll down all their windows, crank up the radio, and go for a ride.
So were a lot of other people.
The IT vans were hitting the highway again, in formation.
Slogan intact: We’re All in This Together.
See if Bruce Leroy was down.
Find Joanjet.
Make a few pit stops, expand the team.
Except it wasn’t going to be the Infects this round.
They were going by a new name.
The Evolved.
But before they could do anything, he had to find Win Fuld.
And have a little talk.
Nero took Nick by the hand and led him straight on down the hall.
ZOMBIEFACTS QUESTION TIME
with Dr. Henry E. Kyburg, head of necrotic studies at the Herschel Gordon Lewis Department of the University of Western Upstate
Q: Why don’t zombies eat every part of a body before they move on to the next one?
A: Do you eat all the toppings on your pizza, or do you pick some off? Do you always wipe your plate clean, or do you get tired of the pheasant compote in balsamic reduction after a few bites? Zombies are an amalgam of teeth, hands, gristle, and vague memories. Sometimes the memory of a bad anchovy takes precedence over the logic of calorie intake.
Q: Do zombies freeze?
A: Yes. The small amount of liquids and oils remaining in most zombies will freeze at zero degrees Celsius and below. Antarctica is a perfectly safe plague-free zone — until global warming takes complete effect. When thawed, Z are capable of resuming full activity. Theoretically, the freezing and thawing should destroy every cell wall in their bodies, but it doesn’t. We have yet to determine why not.
Q: I just read this book in which the United States fights off a zombie outbreak and eventually cleans the entire country of the things, winning the battle and restoring order. Is this even possible?
A: Well, most necrologists and other zombology professionals generally agree on the Bauer Breakdown, otherwise known as the “6-3-1 model.” Essentially it postulates a numerical likelihood for every ten given people during the initial wave of infection. Namely, six will turn Z, three will die outright (suicide, heart attack, car accident, etc.) without turning, and one will “survive,” or remain human. If we extrapolate these numbers, given a U.S. population of roughly 300 million, that means 180 million will be zombies, 90 million will die immediately, and 30 million will survive. If those 30 million were somehow able to establish a provisional government and a fighting force, they would need to kill 180 million zombies — almost all of them by individual head shot. This, of course, would be almost, if not entirely, impossible. Just to eradicate 10 percent of the beasts — using a (ver
y generous) 50 percent accuracy rate — would require 36 million bullets alone. That’s more than 1 million bullets per survivor. It also presumes that each of those survivors is healthy, fighting capable, and sane. No, the fantasy of organized ballistics-based eradication is just that: a fantasy.
Q: Are zombies really just bulimics with bad skin and an unfair reputation?
A: Who let this person in?
Q: What is the one thing that the movies always get wrong about zombies?
A: Children. It’s a grim but true fact that a vast percentage of children will not survive the initial outbreak — some death estimates are as high as 94 percent for children up to age twelve within the first month. Preteen children are slower, weaker, and lack adequate reasoning or problem-solving skills. They are easy targets for zombies. Most movies that show hordes walking down streets or through malls rarely reflect the likely age composition of any given zombie group when younger casualty rates are factored in. In fact, parents who try to protect their children have a 96 percent higher mortality rate than single or individual survivors. Protecting or comforting a child in the open, trying to explain random horrific violence or the nature of evil, seeing to a child’s needs, scavenging for two, and counting on the child’s not drawing zombies to your location or hideout with assorted whining, crying, and the like are all nearly impossible. Should humanity survive a zombie attack and regain the upper hand, it may very well perish anyway, as repopulation of an entire age group would prove extremely difficult. Any true post-zombie scenario would be less about getting the lights back on and more about unrestrained procreation.
Q: Do zombies ever have to take a shit after eating all that fatty meat?
A: Zombie excretion is unheard of. Bowel activity ceases with the onset of the virus. A highly active zombie should theoretically be more weighed down or even incapacitated by the sheer flesh poundage it ingests, as opposed to a zombie yet to feed. Even so, we have not noticed a diminishment of motor function in the field due to being “overserved.”
Q: How can they exist if they don’t breathe?
A: The zombie brain is much like a D-cell battery with the barest remnant of a charge. It requires no internal oxygen replenishment. There is some speculation that zombies absorb oxygen through the skin in a crude method akin to reverse transpiration. While this theory has its adherents, I don’t put much stock in it. Zombie lungs might as well be a pair of old rubber boots. And, of course, their blood does not require cleaning. Oxygen, therefore, is largely superfluous.
Q: If they are decomposing, that means their muscles are decomposing too, which means they would be totally weak, if not crippled, right? So how come zombies are so dang strong?
A: Zombie locomotion is entirely without precedent in the natural world and would seem to defy logic — even demented logic. Not to mention basic anatomy, biology, and chemistry. You are correct that they should not be able move once the muscle, tendons, and fasciae degrade. Even shambling should be beyond them. And yet it is not.
Q: What are the most important items to acquire during a zombie siege?
A: A head-mounted flashlight. Batteries. Matches. A pistol fitted with a silencer (opening up on a horde with an AK-47 may momentarily clear your lawn, but will almost certainly draw every other zombie within a three-mile radius to your location). Ammunition. Freeze-dried food. Iodine tablets. Basic medicines. Cooking oil. Needle and thread. Light, warm clothes. Water-resistant outerwear. A hammock for sleeping in trees. A blizzard-rated sleeping bag. A cudgel or other heavy bludgeoning weapon with a short handle (baseball bats and fire axes sound good on paper but are often useless, as they have zero leverage and swing radius in tight quarters — a five-pound roofer’s hammer is nearly the perfect weapon). A small, sturdy backpack. Good boots. A hunting knife. A screwdriver and pliers. A crowbar. A propane stove and canisters. Binoculars. The ability to develop and nurture a survival-level degree of sanity in the face of systematic madness.
Q: Can they bite through thick leather? What about Kevlar? If you had a motorcycle helmet, boots, and full Kevlar gear on, could you just walk through a crowd of them?
A: Zombie dentistry is a small but burgeoning subscience upon which I am not entirely qualified to comment, but it is interesting how strong zombie teeth tend to be. What can’t a zombie bite through? There are undoubtedly various cutting-edge fibers and protective coverings that will repel the incisor or molar in question. The problem is that they’ll keep trying, no matter what. And the flesh beneath the protective covering will begin to suffer damage regardless. Large-scale edema, abrasion, and even organ malfunction may follow. Finally, though, any protective covering is only as good as its ability to withstand a horde of zombies and their pernicious hands and teeth from removing it. Unless a motorcycle helmet is welded to your skull, at some point it is likely to be flung aside and access granted to the more delicate prizes within.
Q: What’s the worst thing you can do should the Zomb-A-Pocalypse occur?
A: Barricade yourself in somewhere. Of course, it’s a natural impulse to lock doors, push bureaus and other heavy items in front of attic entrances, and the like. But most people forget that their temporary safety will soon become a slow, torturous death trap. If you’ve locked yourself in the basement of a house filled with zombies, those zombies are unlikely to leave. And sooner or later you are going to run out of food and water — or at least fresh air from having to remain in proximity to your own excrement. Freedom of movement is essential to survival. Out in an open field dodging slow shamblers is vastly preferable to a week’s safety that becomes a self-inflicted hellhole. The one steadfast rule of all plague scenarios: supplies always run out.
Q: Why do they want to eat flesh? Why not tofu? Or Wheat Thins?
A: For the very same reason you prefer a hamburger to a cucumber. Fat, salt, protein, flavor. There is some possibility that, much like the innate human need to procreate, zombies have a preconscious desire to “turn” all those who do not resemble them. If everyone’s ugly, then no one is ugly. If everyone exists in a welter of putrefaction, then hygiene ceases to be a concern. The problem there, from a zombie survival viewpoint, is what do they do with themselves when the last human has been fed upon?
Q: Why don’t they just want to eat brains? I thought all they wanted was brains. Must. Have. Brains.
A: The dictates of B-movie zombie lore have no bearing on reality or scientific fact.
Q: Why don’t they bleed?
A: Zombies do bleed when freshly turned. After that, they tend to seep a thick, coagulated gel until, with time, they become more or less fully desiccated.
Q: If a zombie falls and rots in the forest but there’s no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?
A: This is a foolish question that I have no interest in answering. So I’ll ask you something instead: if a moron wants to know nothing, and is only interested in making cheap jokes, are chunks of said moron vastly more likely to soon be residing in a zombie esophagus than someone who takes his survival seriously? Clearly, yes.
Q: Thank you for your time.
A: You are more certainly welcome. Particularly since time is the one thing we have very little left of.
THE OFFICIAL® ALL-INCLUSIVE USDZA-SANCTIONED ZOMBIE HANDLE/NICKNAME LIST
Swarm
Z Dogs
Lurkers
Necrosapiens
Zoil
Meat Junkies
Zulch
Dead Headz
Zed Heads
Revenants
Revs
Shamblers
Nico Clauxs
Citizen Zane
Coprophages
The Undead
Slackjaws
Zach
Sid and Nancy
Braindrain
The Awakened
Them Thangs
The Plague
Rumsfelds
The Infects
Target Practice
Zee
Kannibale
Ghouls
The Medusans
BerZerkers
Rots
Baked Ziti and Flesh Sauce
Zen Chunks
Red Zeppelins
The Hoard
Boogiemenz
Skels
The Unclean
Necromorphs
Thus Spoke Zombathustra
Stale Skin
Zoftig Fleshpigs
Shin Bags
ZBilly ZJoel
Moaners
Zanucks
Zonks
Uncle Zeddie
Chompers
Stank Zappa and the Muthaz of Invention
The Living Impaired
Zombicapped
Bubba
The Reavers
Zax
Skin Jobs
Night Soilers
Dick Nixons
Zebulons
Rage Cage
Wraiths
Zmaggots
Zeligs
Shamburglers
Zabagliones
Stalkers
Babe Didrikson Zahariases
Zero Population Growth
Barry Zito’s ERA
Zygodactals
Brain Bagels
Chopper
Face-Tearing Zwitterions
The Clergy of Zymurgy
SpamArchy
The Misfits
Anthropophagites
Flesh Tribe
Caribes
The Devolved
The Evolved
THE AUTHOR WOULD LIKE TO THANK YOU for not thinking too unkindly of him for having the gall to refer to himself as “the author.” A huge thank you to Christian “Zomb-Power” Bauer for his many insights and readings of various iterations. He is a prince among men. Also a very heartfelt thanks to Jordan Brown, Steven Malk, Ty King, Matt Heller, Jarrett and Aaron at Dark Coast Press, Henry Kyburg, Daryl Miller-Salomons, Larry Benner, Nathan Pyritz, James Weinberg, Matt Roeser, Hannah Mahoney, Kristine Serio, Brad Listi, Greg Olear, Joe Daly, Tracy Miracle, Carter Hasegawa, Liz Bicknell, everyone over at Candlewick Press, Shawn Harris, and George A. Romero.
SEAN BEAUDOIN is the author of three cutting-edge young adult novels, including You Killed Wesley Payne. About The Infects, his first novel with Candlewick Press, he says, “A new study just released by the Mayo Clinic shows that reading about brain munching actually increases teen brain cognition by up to 46 percent. I didn’t want to write a book about ravenous zombies, but in light of the study, I felt it was my moral and ethical duty to do so. Also, it was ridiculously fun.” He lives in Seattle with his family.
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