“Careful,” she mumbled as he moved towards the bookcase adjacent to the door. “My things…”
She began trying to pick precious items and heirlooms off the shelves—a trophy, a crystal decanter, a framed photograph of the three of them—but Simon wasn’t interested. Summoning all the effort he could muster, he pushed and pulled the bookcase until it came crashing down across the living room door, trapping them safely inside. Janice stood and looked at the mess. Simon collapsed. He aimed for the sofa but skidded in another rancid puddle and ended up on the floor. He was past caring.
They were safe. The house was secure.
After a while, he looked around the room. Something was wrong. He knew his eyes were failing, but he could still see enough to know that someone was missing.
“Where Nathan?”
Janice and Simon lasted another eighteen days together. They sat slumped on the floor at opposite ends of the living room for more than four hundred hours, longer than anyone else for several miles around, still recognizable when most others had been reduced to slurry.
It felt like forever; hour after hour, after silent, empty hour, they sat and remembered who they used to be and what they did and how they’d miss all that they’d lost. Had they been capable of feeling anything, the end would have finally come as a relief. More than a week after they’d died, first Simon and then Janice’s brain activity dwindled and then stopped like batteries running flat.
Nathan only lasted a day after going outside. His dad had been right about one thing: by staying indoors, in cool, dry conditions, their rate of decay had been slowed dramatically. But Nathan hadn’t wanted to sit there doing nothing. In his one long day, he played football (after a fashion), made friends with a frog, chased a cat, tried to climb a tree, and explored that part of the garden that Mum and Dad didn’t like him exploring. And even when he couldn’t move anymore, when everything but his brain and his eyes had stopped working, he lay on his back on the grass and looked up at the lights and the clouds and the birds and planned what he was going to do tomorrow.
Therapeutic Intervention
By Rory Harper
Rory Harper’s short fiction has appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Amazing Stories, Far Frontiers, Aboriginal Science Fiction, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Pulphouse, and The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. His first novel, Petrogypsies, was published in 1989 and was recently reissued by Dark Star Books.
Harper currently blogs at the zombie-themed site eatourbrains.com, where this story originally appeared. Also of interest to zombie lovers might be his two zombie songs, “Fast Zombie Blues” and “Nothing Else Better to Do,” both of which are also available at eatourbrains.com.
Some of the major schools of psychotherapy are psychodynamic, psychoanalytic (e.g. Sigmund Freud), Adlerian, Cognitive-behavioral, Existential, and Rogerian or Person-Centered Therapy (PCT). In PCT, the therapist repeats key phrases that the client has said, which invites the client to elaborate and gradually reveal a wide swath of their thoughts and feelings. Author Blake Charlton, whose parents are both therapists, recently wrote a humorous piece about the first time he had a girl over for dinner, and how his parents would ask her things like, “Tell us about your relationship with your mother” and “So you’re disappointed that your mother works so hard in the city?” which finally led Charlton to exclaim, “No Rogerian therapy at the dinner table!”
Our next story also deals with a counseling scenario, albeit one that’s a bit more macabre. The author says, “Zombies are on my mind pretty often. I was also an addictions counselor for about seventeen years. A lot of my sessions bore some similarity to what takes place in this story—more so than you might think. There are a fair number of counselor in-jokes in this story, and one reader suggested that it be made into a short film for counselors in training, because of the way it illustrates proper responses to common issues, and illustrates how good counselors offer empathy and unconditional positive regard to their clients.”
Even if your client is a zombie.
Transcript of counseling session with Michael R.—May 12, 2019
Good afternoon, Michael. I see you have a new bucket with you.
Hi, Mr. Harper. You like the Hello Kitty on the side?
Very much. [Pause.] So, what would you like to talk about today, Michael?
Nothing much happening. Same old, same old, you know.
How’s your program going?
Um, work was pretty busy. I did a meeting on Thursday.
I think you told me last time that you might have found a new sponsor.
Yeah, he’s a good guy. Been clean three years now. You gotta respect that.
Yes.
It’s hard, you know. Sometimes I think about the old days. Back when I was all crazy. I’m a lot better now, but—
But what, Michael?
It’s like… I dunno… I just don’t feel… happy hardly ever any more.
That’s the brain changes, Michael. Everybody struggles with it. When you give up your bad habit, and all the intensity that goes with it, it takes time for your brain to adjust. It’s okay to not be happy while you’re working through it. You have to honor your loss, and learn to move onward. It takes time.
Yeah, I know… I just… Is this all there is? Just making it from day to day? Is this any way to live?
You’re still not sure it was worth it.
Yeah.
You’d probably be in the ground, Michael.
Sometimes I don’t remember so good, but I was wild and… and free, you know? Going balls to the wall like nothing else mattered. On a terminal buzz twenty-four seven.
I understand. You’re having euphoric recall. You’re remembering the good parts, but not the bad ones.
It was so great!
What about your family?
That part was great, too! [Pause.] Oh, shit. That’s awful, isn’t it?
You killed and ate them.
[Long pause.] Yeah. I’m ashamed.
The Colonel asked me to talk with you about something. On Saturday, an elderly couple was eaten a block away from your house.
That wasn’t me. No way.
I know. You were at work when it happened. I thought you might be able to help with whoever did it. You know how the Colonel is. It could get ugly.
I’m in the clear, Mr. Harper. I don’t hang out with those people no more.
You don’t want to go back to the bad old days, do you, Michael? That whole shoot-on-sight thing wasn’t good for anybody, was it?
Oh, hell, no. That’s when I lost this ear. Another inch to the left—
How about if we do a pee test? You think any DNA besides yours might show up?
[Long pause.]
I’m on your side, Michael. I want it to work as much as you do.
[Pause.] I had a bite. Just one bite. I swear.
How’d you get it?
Some guy. Over at the slaughterhouse. You know, when I took my bucket in for a refill.
The Colonel will want to talk to you after our session.
I swear, I didn’t know the guy. What the fuck was I supposed to do, man? He just fuckin’ walked up and gave it to me! If I wouldn’t have eaten it, somebody else would have. They were already dead, right?
And that’s called?
[Pause.] Shit… Rationalization….
There isn’t any vague “somebody” out there that you can put this off on. You’re the one that’s responsible for your own behavior. Nobody else.
It smelled so damn good. You can always smell the difference between human brains and cow brains. So damn good.
This is a slip, Michael, not a relapse. The Colonel is going to have somebody keeping a close eye on you. First time you look like you’re even thinking about biting somebody, it’s a bullet in the head.
I gotta tell you, your brains smell great, Mr. Harper.
This isn’t about me, Michael.
I mean, sometimes I wake up dreaming about eating your
brains. Like they would taste better than any other brains in the whole world. I would soooo love to eat your brains.
That’s called “transference.” It happens in therapy sometimes. If you spend time obsessing about my brains, you don’t have to face your own issues.
I bet I could just jump over the desk, and—
But you won’t. [Sound of shell being jacked into twelve-gauge pump shotgun.] Michael… you’re a slow zombie. I’d blow your head off before you got completely out of the chair. You know that you wouldn’t be the first.
Fuck. Sometimes I wish I was a fast zombie.
They’re all gone. They were an evolutionary dead end. Every human still alive has killed hundreds of zombies, fast and slow, Michael. Being slow is what saved you.
Crap. Yeah, I know. You need guys like me.
You’re a great plumber, even if you are undead. Please open your bucket. Now.
[Pause.]
How does it smell?
It’s cow brains. How you think it smells?
Please, Michael?
It smells… okay. All right? I could eat them. It would be okay.
Okay is what will keep you out of the ground. You stick with okay and no bullet in the head. You get too far away from okay, and you’re gone, no matter how good a plumber you are. Okay?
[Pause.] Okay…. Crap.
I want you to do thirty meetings in thirty days. Here’s the card. I want it signed every day by your sponsor. You need to have some long talks with him.
Aw, man! I haven’t had to do that stuff since when we first started.
You ate some brains this week. If you think that was a good plan, let me know. I’ll shoot you myself.
It wasn’t a good plan.
Pee test every week until you get to the other side of this.
Fine. Just… fine.
I’m on your side, Michael, but you’ve got to be on your side, too. I believe in you. You’re a good man. You can do this.
I know.
I’ll see you next week, Michael.
Not if I see you first.
[Pause.]
Just kidding.
There’s a meeting at Beth Israel at seven tonight. I’d like to see a signature on your card that says you made it.
Yeah. I’ll try.
Just remember: there’s a bullet in the head waiting for you if you don’t.
He Said, Laughing
By Simon R. Green
Simon R. Green is the bestselling author of dozens of novels, including several long-running series, such as the Deathstalker series and the Darkwood series. Most of his work over the last several years has been set in either his Secret History series or in his popular Nightside milieu. Recent novels include The Good, the Bad, and the Uncanny and The Spy Who Haunted Me. A new series, The Ghost Finders, is forthcoming. Green’s short fiction has appeared in the anthologies Mean Streets, Unusual Suspects, Wolfsbane and Mistletoe, Powers of Detection, and is forthcoming in my anthology The Way of the Wizard.
Apocalypse Now is a strange, wild movie. In it, director Francis Ford Coppola retells Joseph Conrad’s classic Colonial-era novel Heart of Darkness by transposing the story to the Vietnam War. In one scene, American soldiers attempt to seize a beachhead while simultaneously blasting Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” and surfing. Robert Duvall, playing the mad Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore, stands tall as mortars land all around him, and declares, “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.” From there things only get stranger and more surreal, as Martin Sheen’s character Captain Willard travels farther and farther upriver, seeking a rogue colonel named Kurtz.
But the process of filming the movie was as mad and out-of-control as anything that appears on film. Drinking and drugs were rampant among the crew. A storm destroyed the sets, and the borrowed helicopters were called away to fight real-life battles. Star Marlon Brando had become grossly obese and refused to be filmed except from the neck up while standing in deep shadow. Someone on the production had obtained real cadavers to use as props, which turned out to have been stolen from local graves. And director Francis Ford Coppola, who stood to lose everything if the film failed, threatened repeatedly to kill himself.
Sounds pretty insane. But on the other hand, at least they never had to deal with zombies.
Saigon. 1969. It isn’t Hell; but you can see Hell from here.
Viet Nam is another world; they do things differently here. It’s like going back into the Past, into the deep Past—into a primitive, even primordial place. Back to when we all lived in the jungle, because that was all there was. But it isn’t just the jungle that turns men into beasts; it’s being so far away from anything you can recognize as human, or humane. There is no law here, no morality, none of the old certainties. Or at least, not in any form we know, or can embrace.
Why cling to the rules of engagement, to honorable behavior, to civilized limits; when the enemy so clearly doesn’t? Why hide behind the discipline of being a soldier, when the enemy is willing to do anything, anything at all, to win? Why struggle to stay a man, when it’s so much easier to just let go, and be just another beast in the jungle?
Because if you can hang on long enough…you get to go home. Being sent to Viet Nam is like being thrown down into Hell, while knowing all the time that Heaven is just a short flight away. But even Heaven and Hell can get strangely mixed up, in a distant place like this. There are pleasures and satisfactions to be found in Hell, that are never even dreamed of in Heaven. And after a while, you have to wonder if the person you’ve become can ever go home. Can ever go back, to the person he was.
Monsters don’t just happen. We make them, day by day, choice by choice.
I was waiting for my court-martial, and they were taking their own sweet time about it. I knew they were planning something special for me. The first clue came when they put me up in this rat-infested hotel, rather than the cell where I belonged. The door wasn’t even locked. After all, where could I go? I was famous now. Everyone knew my face. Where could I go, who would have me, who would hide me, after the awful thing I’d done? I was told to wait, so I waited. The Army wasn’t finished with me yet. I wasn’t surprised. The Army could always find work for a monster, in Viet Nam.
They finally came for me in the early hours of the morning. It’s an old trick. Catch a man off guard, while he’s still half-drugged with sleep, and his physical and mental defenses are at their dimmest. Except I was up and out of bed and on my feet the moment I heard footsteps outside my door, hands reaching for weapons I wasn’t allowed any more. It’s the first thing you learn in country, if you want to stay alive in country. So when the two armed guards kicked my door in, I was waiting for them. I smiled at them, showing my teeth, because I knew that upset people. Apparently I don’t smile like a person any more.
The guards didn’t react. Just gestured for me to leave the room and walk ahead of them. I made a point of gathering up a few things I didn’t need, just to show I wasn’t going to be hurried; but I was more eager to get going than they were. Finally, someone had made a decision. The Army was either going to give me a mission, or put me up against a wall and shoot me. And I really wasn’t sure which I wanted most.
I ended up in a cramped little room, far away from anything like official channels. My armed guard closed the door carefully behind me, and locked it from the outside. There was a chair facing a desk, and a man sitting behind the desk. I sat down in the chair without waiting to be asked, and the man smiled. He was big, bulk rather than fat, and his chair made quiet sounds of protest whenever he shifted his weight. He had a wide happy face under a shaven head, and he wasn’t wearing a uniform. He could have been a civilian contractor, or any of a dozen kinds of businessman, but he wasn’t. I knew who he was, what he had to be. Perhaps because one monster can always recognize another.
“You’re CIA,” I said, and he nodded quickly, smiling delightedly.
“And people say you’re crazy. How little they know, Captain Marlowe.”
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I studied him thoughtfully. Despite myself, I was intrigued. It had been a long time since I met anyone who wasn’t afraid of me. The CIA man had a slim gray folder set out on the desk before him. Couldn’t have had more than half a dozen pages in it, but then, I’d only done one thing that mattered since they dropped me off here and bet me I couldn’t survive. Well, I showed them.
“You know my name,” I said. “What do I call you?”
“You call me ‘Sir.’” He laughed silently, enjoying the old joke. “People like me don’t have names. You should know that. Most of the time we’re lucky if we have job descriptions. Names come and go, but the work goes on. And you know what kind of work I’m talking about. All the nasty, necessary things that the Government, and the People, don’t need to know about. I operate without restrictions, without orders, and a lot of the time I make use of people like you, Captain Marlowe, because no one’s more expendable than a man with a death sentence hanging over him. I can do anything I want with you; and no one will give a damn.”
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