The Way of All Flesh

by Tim Waggoner

  “Assuming she’s still alive,” Simon says. “Yes. But I won’t.”

  David acted without thinking. He rushed toward Simon, fastened his hands around the youth’s throat and shoved him hard against the wall. The spongy substance gave a little with the impact, almost sending Simon bouncing back into him, but he held the boy fast.

  “Tell me what you know or I’ll kill you.”

  Simon’s mouth worked, but no words came out. David loosened his grip, not by much, but enough so that Simon could speak.

  “You’ve been trying to manage your hunger, but you haven’t been controlling it so much as shunting it aside. Now it’s emerging as anger.”

  He spoke calmly, as if he wasn’t on the verge of having the life choked out of him.

  “Don’t give me any of that shit,” David warned. “Tell me what you know about Sarah.” He tightened his grip once more. “Now.”

  “No.” Simon’s words came out as a harsh rasp now, but he was still able to talk. “If you kill me, you won’t stop me, but you’ll never see me again. I’ll be dead to you forever.”

  David didn’t understand what Simon was trying to tell him. He could almost grasp the meaning of his words, but as soon as he thought he had it, it slipped away. The effort of trying to understand was beginning to make his head hurt. Far easier and less painful—for him, at least—to simply snap the asshole’s neck and get it over with.

  He tightened his grip even further. Simon’s face, which had turned red when David had first begun to choke him, was now a deep crimson, and his eyes were starting to bulge from their sockets. Still, he appeared calm, relaxed even.

  “But I can tell you…how to find…the answer for yourself.”

  Don’t listen to him! He’s just trying to save his miserable excuse for a life!

  But Simon didn’t seem desperate, and he wasn’t trying to fight. He simply stood still and allowed David to choke him. And even though his eyes bulged and his capillaries swelled, David could see that he was watching him closely, waiting to see what he would do.

  It could’ve gone either way, but in the end David released a long sigh and removed his hands from Simon’s neck.

  Simon bent over, put his hands on his knees and gasped for air.

  “So spill it,” David said. “How do I find out about Sarah?”

  David raised his head, smiled and pointed upward.

  Kate laid on her side in the dark, spooned against Marie’s back, one arm around her. She wasn’t the kind who became drowsy after sex; in fact, she was the opposite. She always felt refreshed and charged with energy. Even though it was the middle of the night, she would’ve loved to wake Marie, get out of bed, get dressed and take her new lover out for a very early breakfast. That is, if any restaurants had still been open—and if the town wasn’t crawling with zombies eager to make a breakfast out of them.

  Kate had been surprised—pleasantly so—by this new development. She’d had no idea that Marie felt any attraction toward her. If she had, she would’ve made a pass at her, despite the difference in their ages. Not that such a detail mattered much anymore. She wondered if this was going to be a one-time thing, or if she and Marie would develop a relationship. Part of her would like it if they did become steady lovers—like it very much—but part of her was resistant to the idea. Some survivors desperately clung to others for security after Blacktide, but some were reluctant to let themselves get too close to anyone after the losses they’d already suffered. They didn’t want to risk creating emotional ties with someone, only to lose them too. Kate hadn’t been aware of it, but it seemed she might be one of the latter, at least partially.

  “You awake?” Marie whispered.

  “Yeah,” Kate said.

  Marie rolled over and kissed her. “That was great.”

  Kate grinned. “It sure was.”

  Marie nestled against her, and they lay like that for a time. Kate thought Marie might’ve gone back to sleep, but after a while she said, “Can I show you something?”

  “You’ve shown me a lot already,” Kate teased.

  Marie gave her a playful swat on the rump. “I’m serious!”

  Kate had no idea where this might be leading, but she said, “Sure.”

  Marie rolled off the mattress and turned on the lantern. She padded over to the floor where she’d left her book, and Kate admired the way her body moved. She was thin…no, lithe was a better word. But, despite that, she didn’t appear boyish. She was very feminine, and Kate felt herself moistening as Marie returned to the mattress. She was tempted to try and initiate lovemaking again, but she sensed that whatever Marie wanted to show her, it was important to the girl. Maybe later, she told herself.

  Marie sat cross-legged on the mattress, naked and entirely unselfconscious. Kate sat up too, but the air was chilly, and she drew the blanket around their shoulders.

  Marie held the book so that Kate could inspect its cover. She read the title aloud.

  “The Way of All Flesh.”

  “It’s a religious phrase, although it doesn’t appear word-for-word in the Bible. When God explained to Noah why He was going to destroy the world with a flood, He said, ‘The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth’.”

  Kate looked at her.

  Marie shrugged. “I memorize stuff easily. Samuel Butler used it as the title of a semiautobiographical book. He meant to refer to both the religious and sexual aspects of the phrase.”

  “So what’s this book about?”

  “Zombies, of course.”

  She handed the book to Kate. It was a hardback, and the artwork on the dust jacket showed a green-skinned hand thrusting out of the earth in front of a headstone shaped like a cross. Lovely. She read the author’s name. “Kim Rothschild. Who’s she?”

  “He’s a professor of religious studies. Or was, I suppose. Even if he’s still alive, I doubt he’s still teaching.”

  Kate opened the book and flipped through the pages. “Did you bring it so you’d have something to read in case you got bored having sex with me?” she joked.

  “Hardly. You know that I’ve been trying to figure out why Blacktide happened.”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s too unbelievable that a real-life zombie apocalypse would occur. I mean, it’s like suddenly finding out Santa Claus is real, you know? In his book, Dr. Rothschild analyzes the concept of a zombie apocalypse, looking at it from different angles: religious, philosophical, psychological, sociological, biological… A lot of it’s just speculation—okay, most of it is—but it’s interesting speculation. The book came out only a couple months before Blacktide happened. I picked it up then, but I didn’t get around to reading it until the last couple weeks. He writes about the zombie’s origins in folklore, why people are so fascinated with zombies and how a zombie apocalypse might happen in real life.”

  “I always figured that some sick son of a bitch somewhere decided to make a zombie virus and let it loose on the world,” Kate said, still flipping through the book. “Whoever it was probably used zombie movies and books for inspiration, like how Jules Verne wrote about submarines and moon rockets, and then decades later we actually made the things.”

  “He writes about that. But he says that, according to experts, there’s no way anyone could engineer such a virus, not given our current level of technology. Well, current when he wrote the book. Thanks to Blacktide, we’re pretty much back to caveman levels of tech.”

  Kate shrugged. “Maybe the experts were wrong.”

  “Maybe. Dr. Rothschild writes about other ways it could happen, though. He says that people’s fascination with zombies might be a result of our unconscious minds anticipating a species-wide mutation.”

  Kate looked up from the book and frowned. “You mean that Blacktide was…what? A natural process? Like a new stage of evolution?”

  “More like an evolutionary wrong turn, but yeah. And of course he
talks about it coming as a punishment from God, like an Old Testament plague.”

  Kate thought of the Bible verse Marie had quoted, where God was explaining to Noah why He was going to destroy the Earth. The zombie virus had rolled across the world like a tsunami of biblical proportions. Even its name—Blacktide—sounded like a dark flood. The idea of a wrathful, punishing God spoke to the lapsed Catholic in her, and she shuddered.

  “But the scenario that really interests me is one that Dr. Rothschild based on Eastern philosophy: the idea that reality is influenced—if not created entirely—by our perceptions of it. In this scenario, if enough people are fascinated by the idea of a zombie apocalypse, and maybe even secretly on some level desire it, then they could reshape reality to fit their fantasy.”

  “You mean everyone…imagined Blacktide into existence?”

  “Basically. And if we made it happen, then maybe we can make it un-happen. Reverse the process somehow. Observing your brother has gotten me thinking. The way he shared the squirrel with that other zombie in the park, the way he pointed to the body of his son tonight, as if he remembered who the boy was…not to mention the twin connection you clearly still share with him. He’s not just a mindless killing machine. There’s a human being still inside him somewhere. If we could reach the person he used to be, make him understand that he’s really human…”

  “He’d change back?”

  “Maybe. I know it sounds crazy, but he’s not like other zombies. You’ve seen it. More than that, you’ve felt it through your link. Right?”

  Kate was beginning to think she’d just had sex with a crazy person. Then again, she thought ruefully, it wouldn’t be the first time. She was familiar with the idea of consensual reality, the idea that existence is what it is because the vast majority of humanity agreed that’s the way it should be. It was a fun concept to play around with mentally, but that’s all she’d ever taken it for.

  “People can’t simply reshape reality to suit their own desires.” She smiled. “If we could, everyone would be rich, beautiful and thin. Sure, people’s beliefs shape their psychological reality, and in that sense, everyone lives in their own world. But reality is reality. Mere thought can’t change it.”

  “Some people theorize that throughout history individuals lived who were so highly advanced spiritually that they could reshape reality. That’s where our myths and religions come from: people who could perform what seemed to the rest of us like miracles. But we’re not talking about individuals. We’re talking about the entire human race, the whole damned collective unconscious, conditioned by decades of zombie imagery. Before Blacktide, more people around the world believed in zombies, at least in a sense, than in any particular religion. That’s a hell of a lot of psychic energy.”

  Kate didn’t believe any of this for a moment. But she couldn’t deny that David had acted differently than any zombie she’d ever seen before. And she had felt the link between them—still there, still strong.

  “So what are you suggesting? That we capture David and try to perform some kind of zombie intervention with him? Maybe pray the dead away?”

  Marie smiled. “I don’t know. I’m making this stuff up as I go along.” She yawned. “Tell you what, you keep the book, look into it some and see what you think. I’m going to go to sleep. It’s been a hell of a day.”

  She leaned in to give Kate a long, lingering kiss. Then she crawled onto the mattress, slid beneath the blanket and turned over onto her side, away from the light. Within moments her breathing deepened, and Kate knew she’d fallen asleep.

  She wanted to get into bed and cuddle up next to Marie, wanted to feel the girl’s warm skin next to hers. Instead, she turned to the beginning of the book and began to read the author’s introduction.

  The elevator was formed from the same spongy material as the rest of the hospital’s interior—walls white, floor and ceiling gray. The control panel was made of metal and plastic, however, and despite how tall the hospital was, there were buttons for only five levels: Sacral, Lumbar, Thoracic, Cervical and Medulla. As the doors closed, Simon said, “We’re heading all the way to the penthouse.”

  David pushed the button for Medulla, and the elevator began to ascend. This was a hospital elevator, so it was large enough to transport patients on gurneys or in beds when needed. David and Simon had the elevator to themselves, though, and this was fine with David. The last thing he wanted to do right now was deal with any more of the hospital’s crazy staff or patients. Hunger cramped his gut, and he found himself wondering what Simon would taste like. Without thinking, he drew in a deep breath through his nose to drink in Simon’s scent, and that’s when he realized that the youth had no scent.

  “Sorry,” Simon said, once more seeming to read David’s mind. “I’m like a wish sandwich.”

  “Huh?”

  Simon grinned. “A wish sandwich is the kind of sandwich where you have two slices of bread and you wish you had some meat.”

  David just looked at him. He wasn’t in the mood for jokes, especially not ones that bad.

  Simon faced forward. “Tough crowd,” he muttered.

  There was an LED display above the door. It had read Sacral when they first got on, then it went blank as they started to move. David kept his eyes on the display, waiting impatiently for the elevator to reach the next level. They were moving, he could feel it, but slow as an insect trapped in amber.

  Another wave of vertigo hit him, and for a moment he was in a stairwell, gripping the rail for leverage, taking one stair at a time, dragging his broken foot along as best he could, Simon nowhere in sight. The moment passed, and he found himself back in the elevator, Simon at his side.

  He wanted to ask the youth if this—the hospital, the elevator—was real, if any of it was, but he knew he wouldn’t get a straight answer, so he didn’t bother. Lumbar appeared on the display for a few seconds, and then the screen went dark again. He decided to ask a different question.

  “I don’t remember when you told me this, but you said you wanted to find out if I was The One. You said it like that too. The One. As if it was a title of some kind.” He frowned as he tried to recall more. “You also said something about wanting to know if I could transcend hunger.”

  His stomach gave a sharp, painful twist at that moment, almost as if it were listening.

  “Yes.”

  “Why is that important?”

  Thoracic appeared on the display, remained for a moment, then vanished.

  Simon considered before answering. “In the cosmic scheme of things, the process of transcendence matters more than what you transcend. But hunger—a product of the physical body and individual need—makes for an excellent obstacle to overcome. Transcendence means asking, ‘Can I be more than I already am? More than I thought possible? Can I move past the obstacles holding me back—’ in your case, hunger, ‘—to what lies beyond?’”

  The elevator reached the Cervical level, continued upward.

  “What’s beyond hunger?” David asked.

  Simon’s eyes slid to dark until they resembled polished obsidian, and his mouth widened, exposing teeth sharp and yellow. A wolf’s smile.

  “More hunger, of course. But a hunger so far beyond the annoying sensation in your wittle tummy-tum-tum as a blazing supernova is beyond a flickering match.”

  David blinked and Simon’s face was normal once more. Before he could respond, the elevator came to a stop and the display lit up with the word Medulla. They were here, wherever and whatever here was.

  Simon clapped him on the back. “Good luck. I’m rooting for you, champ.” He grinned, his teeth small and blunt again. “Or given the current state of the world, maybe I should say I’m rotting for you.” He chuckled.

  The elevator door slid open, and before David could do anything, Simon stepped behind him, pressed a hand between his shoulder blades and shoved. He stumbled out of the elevator and into darkness. A darkness which became total when the elevator door slid shut, cutting o
ff the light from the car. He then heard a soft hum as the elevator began making its way downward once more. Even if he’d been inclined to chicken out, which he wasn’t, there was nothing he could do about it. His ride was gone.

  He wanted several moments for his vision to adjust to the dark, but it didn’t. Despite his damaged memory, he recalled the only other time in his life when he had experienced darkness this total. Before the divorce, he and Sarah had taken the kids to Mammoth Caves in Kentucky. He’d never been inside a real cave before, and he was surprised to find himself feeling mildly claustrophobic. When the guide had taken their group to the midpoint of their tour, she turned off all the lights in the cavern to show them how dark it became without even the weakest source of illumination present. A cave is the darkest place on Earth, she’d said, then added, Not counting the deepest parts of the ocean. The guide hadn’t been exaggerating. The darkness was so absolute David felt as if he’d been cut off from everything and everyone. It was as if the universe itself had ceased to exist, somehow leaving him behind as the sole occupant of the resulting void. He could hear his own pulse thrumming in his ears, the volume increasing incrementally with each successive beat until he felt his head might explode from the pounding. Then the guide had turned the lights on again, and everyone let out nervous chuckles. Everyone except David. He hadn’t found the experience amusing in any way. Still, he’d managed to smile at David and Lizzie, and Sarah—perhaps sensing how uncomfortable he was—had reached out to take his hand.

  He was in a similar darkness now. Only this time, there was no guide to turn on the lights, and no family to hold his hand. He was alone, in every way.

  Forcing himself to remain calm, he crouched down and touched the floor. It was spongy, like the rest of the hospital’s interior, only it felt wet and a bit sticky too. He wiped his hand on his pants before standing once again. What should he do? Should he walk forward? He didn’t relish the idea of trying to navigate in this darkness, especially across a slick, spongy surface. Besides, he had no idea what he was looking for, so how would he know when he found it? If he found it. But he did know why he had come here and what he wanted.