I felt an almost unbelievable lack of fear. This man was much larger than me, and armed with a knife and a gun-that I knew about. But I continued to charge him. After a moment, he detected the direction of my approaching footfalls and turned to face me, still squinting to see beyond the glare of the lantern hanging above him.
He was wild-eyed. He regarded me only for an instant as I came into view, and then looked not at me but past me. He wanted to see if I was alone or part of a group. The girl squirmed completely free and started sprinting toward me.
"Run to the house," _'I screamed at her. "Don't run to me! Run to the house!" She obeyed, and we passed one another on the fly.
The man looked over at his ATV, and then at me. This was the fight-or-flight instinct they talked about. I was watching it unfold in front of me. (Most would have hoped to induce the latter, but, as I say, uncannily, I felt no fear.) I closed within a few paces of the scruffy-looking man, and he could now make me out with perfect clarity. A contemptuous smile curled on his beard-covered lips. I could see him sizing me up. Middle-aged. Out of shape. Dressed like a city boy. Yeah ... I should be no problem.
He looked past me again, but not to see if others followed me. Rather, it was a longing look at the backside of the little girl. It was a look that said not to wander too far. A look that said he'd be with her again in a moment ...
I opened my mouth to say something to the crazed, hairy man, but in that instant he leveled his gun at my chest and fired. The weapon leapt wildly in his grip, and the bullet knocked me down.
(Look, as I hope is clear at this point in my tale, I'm not a "gun guy." Remember how in Days of Thunder, Tom Cruise's character didn't "know cars"? Remember that? Yeah. Well, I don't "know guns." I don't know anything about them beyond what I learned from going through this experience. I was a college philosophy professor, not a hunter. Was the gun that this woolly man used to shoot me "high-caliber" or something? I have no idea. Was it a .22 or a .38 or a Colt .45? Again, your guess is going to be as good as mine. Let's just say it was a giant, scary-ass handgun, held by a terrifying-looking man, and it sent me flying backwards.)
After a moment's disorientation, I opened my eyes and understood exactly what had happened. I had been knocked on my back. The bullet had hit high, stage left. Near my heart, actually. (But the joke was going to be on him, wasn't it?)
An evil smile spread across my face. There was no pain at all. Not even a tickle. The man above me was looking up the path again, toward the girl. He had already stuck the gun down the back of his pants. In a trice, he was advancing into the darkened wood after her.
All at once, I began to feel the strange sensations that had overtaken me as I'd watched the zombies feasting on that body behind the dilapidated bar. It was an awakening that seemed to come from the back of my eyeballs and flow through my entire body. I shivered with pleasure and anticipation. This time, it was my turn.
I stood up quietly and began to follow my would-be killer. He moved slowly, corralling (as opposed to chasing) the child. I crept ever nearer. He never once looked back. I sidled up near him, matching my footfalls in time to his own. The snow's soft powder concealed almost every noise.
When I drew within arm's reach, he sensed something and paused, lifting his head like a deer sniffing the air. I leaned in, and in one deft movement, pulled the heavy weapon from his pants. He spun on his heels and lunged violently, but stopped when he saw the gun in my hand. I pointed it at him.
He was clearly confused. He had just shot me. Had seen me go down. This did not make sense. I took a few steps back, turned to the side, and bucked the gun as far as I could into the woods. Wasting no time, my assailant drew his knife.
I threw off my hat and pointed to my lack-of-head. His eyes widened to pie plates.
"That's right, motherfucker," I shouted. "Come get some!"
They say you never forget your first time.
Know what? They're fucking right.
There may be subsequent occurrences that bring greater excitement or deeper pleasure. Yet, alas! It is these most pleasurable encounters which often prove the most difficult to recall, instant for instant, later on. The greatest ecstasy can be the most ephemeral. (The brain is a confounding and delicious thing.) But the first time ... You remember everything about that.
But let's be honest, too: The first time is seldom the most pleasurable (if it is pleasurable at all). You don't know what you're doing. The other person doesn't know what they're doing. You're both scared. You just writhe around together on the ground for a few minutes, and then suddenly, it's done. It's over, and you think to yourself: "Gee, that was it? That's what all the fuss is about?" But then, after a little reflection (and recovery time), you start to think maybe it was pretty good, after all-maybe you would like to try it again. And again. Then you start to practice. You get better at it. Before long, you know what you're doing. And that's when it starts to get really good.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. (And one must not, in these matters, arrive prematurely.) My first time-there in those woods, with this nightmare wild-man struggling and fighting the whole time-is etched into my memory as if by lightning, every moment of it. I can recall each moment and stage as vividly as if they were pictures in a book. I can hit repeat and play the track again and again and again.
I can watch myself lunge forward, feel his knife lodging painlessly in my chest, and taste the spray as I bite into his throat. I can feel him flailing wildly, landing blows on my face and hands. I can feel the blows register, painlessly, all over my body. I feel him try to buck me, like an animal I'm riding. He whips his neck back and forth like a wet dog drying itself, but still I remain. I am attached to him-by a connection so firm I would not have thought it possible. I can taste the terror and confusion in his eyes as I taste his neckblood with my tongue. Soon, he is paralyzed by his own pain and surprise, which allows me to bite deeper. I know that I've "struck home" when the blood begins to geyser out in time to his heartbeat from the mass of gore that used to be his throat. It's clear (to my remaining human sentience) that nobody comes back from this kind of injury. I've hit the right veins and arteries.
Before long, I am covered in his blood. I have a beard of blood spilling down my chin. I still wear his knife in my chest. He falls to his knees.
I am clearly the victor, yet there is so much life in him still-life that will not or cannot surrender. He fights and fights. Against itthe inevitable. It is a full five minutes before he decides to stop resisting and flopping like a fish. He understands that I have won.
His breathing begins to make noise. His lungs are full of blood and straining. It is the death rattle of old.
Then, even when he is still and cold and lifeless before me, I cannot stop biting. I know it is not the end. One task still remains.
Now ... Here's something important-something the movies (most of them, anyway) get dead wrong. Human heads are hard. Very hard. The skull is incredibly tough. You can't just bite through it like the crusty top of a creme bralee. It takes work to get down in there. I mean, doctors-when they do brain surgery or whateverhave to use saws and fucking power drills to get through a skull. They use shit you have to plug in. It takes quite a bit of force and power. You can't just crunch through with your incisors.
It's a harsh truth, and one that I was about to find out.
When the hairy ATV-man was dead-really dead and unmoving-I wanted nothing more than to eat his brain. Nothing more. It was a romantic and poetic longing. I wanted to get inside of his head. To be inside him with my tongue and mouth, and then have him be inside of me. (In my stomach.) A wonderful sharing of inside and outside. Ahh, yes ... A divine communion of brain and tongue.
The problem was how.
I looked down at the motionless corpse and considered where I might start. His head was a complete mystery to me-a labyrinth with delicious brains hidden in the middle. How would I find my way in?
I'll tell you the way I did it, but please, don't judge me. I wasn't as suave
and sophisticated as the zombies you see in the movies, chomping through papier-mache heads. I'm a pragmatist at heart, I guess. I did it in the most practical way possible. Just try not to laugh. (First times are embarrassing for everybody.)
I stooped down next to him, took a grip on the ears, and brought his head up to my mouth. My first few tentative bites into his scalp proved fruitless. I knew there had to be a way to get in there. After all, eating brains was what zombies did. But hour did they do it? Was there some trick they knew? Was my humanlike sentience preventing me from enjoying the full brain-eating advantages enjoyed by the rest of the walking dead?
Then my arm absently brushed against the knife still buried in my chest. Was there-I wondered-any rule that said a zombie couldn't use tools? I didn't think there was. Besides, nobody was looking.
Removing the serrated hunting knife (which, I had to grant, had been expertly and forcefully driven between my ribs by my foe), I took a knee next to the corpse and began to saw at the top of the head.
Nothing doing. I succeeded in little more than mutilating him.
Leaving my victim awkwardly half-scalped, I turned my attention instead to his neck, where I had bitten him to death. There, his skin gave way more easily. Soon, I felt the knife punch through into the windpipe, like I was punching it into the soft center of a pumpkin. I was elated. This felt like progress.
Before long, I had opened up the neck, and only the spinal cord connected the dead head to the body. I applied the knife's serrated side to the cord, carefully and forcefully, and made short work of it. Holding the severed head up to my face, I gnawed into the bloody hole. The taste was exhilarating, but the brains eluded me. They were there-so close, only inches away yet still out of reach of my anxious lips.
I dropped the head and howled like an animal. This wanting was intolerable. I could not remember desiring a thing so intensely. I drummed my chest in anger, casting my gaze wildly into the snowy night. I looked for anything that might solve my horrible problem.
Just off the path, set back into the woods, was an ancient stone fence. It looked as though it separated long-forgotten property lines. Now it stood moss-covered and crumbling. Despite the ravages of time, the waist-high wall looked like it was still tough. Strong. Hard. Harder than a skull. For the second time that evening, an irrepressible smile curled my lips. Yes ... This was something I could work with.
My first few ill-considered blows involved driving the head itself into the stone wall, which did not have the desired effect. (I only further mutilated the face.) Then, at my feet, I found a heavy stone that had long ago fallen away. I set the head on the top of the little wall, then hefted the loose stone and brought it down with all the force I could muster. Something gave. I did it again. And again. And again.
Before long, I had cracked the nut.
What I ended up consuming, as I ate the contents of his head, looked more akin to "brain paste" than the ridged, shapely brain that one is accustomed to seeing in medical journals. Still, the pleasure was not lost on me. I scooped him into my mouth hungrily. I chewed him like bubble gum. It was beyond delicious. I ran my finger around the inside of his head and licked my fingers, like he was a peanut butter jar.
It wasn't always pretty, but it got the job done.
Like I said, it was my first time.
When it was over, I sat on the ground, my back against the hard stone wall. I was covered in blood and bone fragments. The man's headless body rested only feet away on the driveway.
So that was eating someone's brain, I thought to myself. Not had. Not had at all.
Some part of my newfound zombie sensibilities told me that there also might be some enjoyment to consuming the rest of the man. His skin. His muscles. His guts. Yet it was almost too overwhelming to contemplate-eating an entire man. I had tasted brains for the first time tonight. That would be enough for one evening. (But tomorrow, perhaps, or the next day, I would be ready to investigate more.)
I knew not how much time had passed when I first heard the sound of approaching footsteps. They advanced down the drive in my direction. They were slow. Measured. Heavy. I looked up from my bloodbath, staring hard into the forest until I finally detected movement. It was a monstrous shape. Something massive. A miniature mountain that walked or stumbled.
I stood. The shambling shape sensed this and paused, and in its own movement betrayed itself for what it was-the neighbor woman, Matilda. She was wearing a strange hodgepodge of sportsequipment and body armor-a policeman's riot helmet, a vest, and what appeared to be skateboard kneepads. Her shotgun was at the ready. Though the sight was risible-and my first inclination was laughter-I became all at once hesitant. There was suddenly a lot to think about.
Part of me, still hungry for brains, wanted to eat this woman too. (She had, after all, been something of a bitch to Vanessa. And there was so much of her ... It would be a grand buffet!) Another part of me-the rational mind still left-also understood that this woman could destroy me with that weapon she was carrying. She could destroy my brain, and then I would cease to exist. Another part of me still understood that there were people back down that road, inside a daringly designed energy-efficient house, whom I bore no ill will-one of whom, I even loved-and whom I wanted clever to be eaten, by me or by any other zombie.
The mountain woman drew closer. I had to make a decision.
Already, I knew the answer. I would not eat this horrible woman. That was not something I could do. At least not tonight. But with the dead man's gore still warm on my face, neither could I go back to that house.
Matilda stalked closer, heading in the direction of the old wall. I could see her clearly. The mask of her riot helmet had fogged over with her breathing. She nearly tripped over the headless corpse, and when she did see it, the thing seemed to register as nothing more than an earthy inconvenience, like a pile of dog shit or moldy, rotting garbage. Matilda continued stalking forward into the gloom. This was a hard woman.
I cleared my throat. A little blood came up with the gurgles.
"Matilda!" I called. "Matilda, over here."
She started, and fell to one knee, pointing the firearm wildly. She looked in my general direction but seemed not to see me. (I think she only saw the stone wall, and assumed I was on the other side of it.)
"Who's that there?" she spat in a guttural whisper.
"It's Peter," I replied. "Look, don't turn on your flashlight. There ... there still might be others around."
"What's going on?" Matilda whispered. "Elsie said she saw someone shoot you. And this guy's got no head."
"Uh, yeah," I said, choosing not to reveal exactly what had happened.
Matilda cocked her shotgun.
"Look," I said, "I can't go back to the house right now. Something happened. I have to leave. Please tell Vanessa I'm sorry."
"What?" Matilda said.
"Look, I killed one of them," I said. "I scared the others off, but they're going to cone back for me. I think ... I think I should take that guy's ATV and lead them away from the house."
Matilda seemed to think fora moment. "Okay," she said.
"We want to make them lose interest in this house," I said. "We've got to keep them away from the little girls. All these driveways look the same. You take that lantern down, and they're not going to remember this place."
"Aye, I'll do that," she said (suddenly Scottish). She began to edge closer to me.
"No," I said. "Don't come any closer. Seriously. I'm gross. Just go back down the path until I get out of here. Please."
"Uh-huh," she said, seeming to grow somewhat skeptical.
I stood cautiously, and began to pick my way along the stone wall toward the road. I had taken no more than four or five steps when Matilda's flashlight hit me in the back.
To this day, I can't tell you how much she saw. I have no idea. My face was a carnival of gore. But my backside? That's harder to know. I had not, of course, replaced my hat, so it was possible that she saw the missing top o
f my head. Yet I walked through the underbrush with a bit of a stoop, and this may have concealed my mutilation from her. Again, I cannot say for sure.
"Turn that offl" I shouted as the beam fell around me. "They are here and they will see you."
For a moment, the beam inspected my back, its invasive circle of light as obscene and violating as any lecher's grope. Then the hefty woman switched it off, and I heard her retreating back down the path.
"Just making sure," she whispered. "Just making sure ..."
I returned to the drive's entrance and switched off the lantern. Then I saw about the ATV. A Kawasaki, keys in the ignition. A full tank of gas. It was the best option. The only option. It was my new ride, whether I liked it or not. (I wondered if I ridden an ATV before. I didn't think I had.)
Before I pulled away, I found the timeworn Kernels baseball hat on the ground, and put it back on my head.
It fit perfectly.
I drove and drove, to the top of the highest hill I could find. Ohio-even central Ohio-has its areas of hills and valleys, and I was definitely among them. I rode through the night for what felt like hours, along back country roads, until I found the tallest hill. I went up, up, up the lonely road toward the top. I found an empty place with a few farms on the hillside. Maybe a little Amish below.
The hill was bald at the top. Just a few shrubs and bushes, and an old forgotten spool that had once contained wire. I got off the ATV and sat down on the spool. Then I stood up again, and started pacing.
An interesting side note: So, okay ... Have I made it clear by this point that I can't really feel pain? Because I can't. I have "sensation," but I don't really feel it in the same way I used to. It's like, say you walk up to me and tap me on the shoulder. I'll have the information, You are being tapped on the shoulder, but I won't really "feel" the tap. Not like I used to feel things. Same thing with being stabbed or shot. I'm aware when the knife or bullet goes in. On some level, I get the information, There is now a great opening in your chest that wasn't there a second ago, but the info comes without any sensation-positive or negative-attached to it.
Zombie, Ohio Page 7