Brains: A Zombie Memoir

by Robin Becker

  “I’m tired,” Pete said. “I need to sleep. Someplace safe.” He replaced his cap. “And alone,” he added.

  I nodded. I longed to touch his shoulder in reassurance but I didn’t dare. Touching leads to grabbing and grabbing leads to biting and biting leads to eating and before you know it, your driver is gone.

  Pete exited at the next service area and pulled into a Comfort Inn. He found the keys and the room.

  We were in Wisconsin, near Manitowoc. Land of cheese.

  “Can she stand guard?” Pete asked, pointing at Annie.

  We looked at her. She touched the gun at her hip.

  “Just a few hours,” Pete said.

  “Sweet dreams!” Ros said.

  Pete slammed the bolt into place and moved furniture in front of the door.

  “What?” Ros called. “Don’t you trust us?”

  The parking lot was full of abandoned cars and melting snow. The frontage road was deserted. The humans had either been eaten to the marrow or fled. And no humans meant no zombies.

  “What’s the plan, captain?”

  The plan?

  Here’s a plan for you: After the bomb drops, live securely in your shelter with enough canned food for a century-but, oops, no can opener! Or be the last man on earth, finally alone with your precious books-and, oops, break your glasses!

  This world was an episode of The Twilight Zone.

  The plan, my dear Ros, was simple: Walk around in circles, drooling and moaning, until we stumble upon some hapless human to devour.

  Or decay until we’re nothing but walking, chattering bones.

  Or shoot each other in the brains and end our misery.

  The real plan, the ultimate plan, was to wake from this eternal nightmare, cozy in bed with Lucy beside me, and drink a hot cup of coffee while reading the morning paper. After a breakfast of eggs and toast, the plan was to walk to the university and deliver a ninety-minute lecture deconstructing Britney Spears’s new haircut.

  Ros, Joan, and I shuffled into the lobby. Ros turned on the radio. “Chin up,” he said. “Soldier on.”

  Guts was playing with Isaac in the circular drive outside, tossing the baby up high and catching him. I considered stopping them-what if Guts missed?-but Isaac’s mouth was open as if laughing and besides, we were invincible. Almost.

  If ever there was a time for an old-fashioned wooden deus ex machina…

  I waited for it to descend from the sky. I looked out the window. Guts threw Isaac up in the air and wandered off, distracted by something. The baby splatted on the ground, rolling like a burrito. A grub worm. Olive Oyl’s Sweet Pea all bundled in his blue blanket.

  Ros fiddled with the dial. Nothing. No ghost in that machine. No savior.

  We had to save ourselves.

  “And then I carried my son upstairs,” a woman’s voice said, bursting out of the radio, “and locked him in his room.”

  “How old is he?” asked another woman.

  “Ten.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “He’s still in there. He’s moaning, banging on the door.”

  “Here’s what you do, here’s what you have to do.”

  The mother sobbed. “I know what I have to do! The problem is I can’t do it.”

  “Gwen,” the woman said, “calm down and listen to me…”

  “What if they discover a cure? What if he’s alive in there somewhere? He’s my baby. My only son.”

  Ros rolled his eyes. “Cry me a river,” he said.

  But Joan put her hands over her bosom. The old broad was touched.

  “You’re a survivor, Gwen,” the woman on the radio said. “You’ve made it this far. You are strong. You can do this!”

  “Kids?” Ros asked Joan.

  Joan held up three fingers.

  “One of each,” Ros said.

  So I’d been wrong about Joan and her spinsterhood, as I’d been wrong about everything so far: Eve. Stein. Our future. Even Stephen King. What other lies had I told myself? What lies do I continue to believe?

  “Is there a man about the house?” the woman asked Gwen.

  “Not anymore,” Gwen said. “Shit, shooting that bastard was easy. Right between the eyes.”

  The women laughed. Ros switched off the radio.

  “Things have changed,” he said.

  He was right. If there was talk radio…

  “Miss my girlfriend,” he said.

  And I didn’t even know Ros’s real name.

  “We met in high school,” he gurgled. “Drama club. We were doing Grease-Becky played Frenchie. I built sets, moved stuff around. Grunt work. What I’m good at.”

  Frenchie. The Beauty School Dropout. I gestured for Ros to go on.

  “Becky wasn’t the most beautiful girl in town,” he continued. “But she was mine and I loved her.”

  Ros wheezed and pressed his diaphragm. It was the most I’d heard him say at once and it appeared to give him pain.

  “Ooorrmmph,” said Joan.

  “Wonder where she is now.” Ros rested his chin in his hand. His fingers disappeared into his cheek. “Dead or undead.” His skin was raw, splotched with lesions and pus. “You made me this way,” he said, looking at me.

  I shrugged my shoulders. Guilty as charged.

  Ros walked over. He opened his arms and embraced me. “I’m glad,” he said. “Brothers. You and me.”

  I extended an arm to Joan and she joined us.

  “Group hug,” Ros said, resting his metal head on my fortified shoulder. “Feels good.”

  IN THE LOBBY, we gave up. We sat around and slobbered, our eyes vacant and weeping yellow. Until we heard a gunshot outside. Then another and another.

  “Annie,” Ros said.

  It took minutes to get off the couch. Long minutes to walk to the door. More minutes to open it. Isaac was still stuck on the circular drive. We left him there, a caterpillar in his cocoon.

  There was a cluster of undead advancing on Annie, zeroing in on Pete’s room. Annie was holding them off, blowing their brains out, but the moans and shots would attract more. Behind the door, I could hear Pete moving furniture.

  “Stay in there,” Ros yelled. “Not safe.”

  Pete opened the door anyway, armed with the metal towel rack from the bathroom, some straightened wire hangers, and a chair. Clever man looked like a lion tamer.

  There were five zombies left, not counting us. Pete raced to the closest, and-wham!-whacked her upside the head with the towel rack. The fixture broke in half-cheap motel shit-and the zombette kept coming. Pete jammed the clothes hanger in her eye, pushing it in and twisting. The eye popped out and she fell.

  “Aww,” Ros said. “She looked like a nice girl.”

  Annie took care of the remaining undead lickety-split. Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam!

  Surely she was running out of bullets.

  Screaming like a television Indian chief, sneaky Pete lunged for Annie and plunged the coat hanger into her neck, thrusting it up under her helmet and into her head. But he must’ve missed her brain stem, because nothing happened.

  Annie rammed the gun into Pete’s stomach. The trigger clicked. Empty.

  Out of somewhere, out of nowhere, out of the very ether, Guts raced up, hunched low like a football player, and bit Pete in the ankle.

  How I loved that ankle biter, the crumb crusher. Our adorable imp.

  Pete collapsed. There was no turning back now. We pounced on our driver, peeling him open like an orange. He screamed like no orange I’ve ever heard.

  It was a Sunday family dinner: Joan gripping Pete’s glistening something or other in her hands like a raccoon, blood dripping down her chin; Guts pulling out yards and yards of guts, rolling around in them, biting them; Ros holding Pete’s lungs aloft like Lady Justice; and Annie, sweet young thing, Annie had captured his heart, which looked fake, like an anatomical gummi heart-gelatinous, chewy, and chock-full of high-fructose corn syrup.

  As for me, the patriarch, I sat at the head
of the table. Pete’s hair stuck to the roof of my mouth and in between my teeth like corn silk. I cracked his skull like a pecan. Sweet nut of the brain underneath. Baby Isaac wailed from the circular drive in front of the motel, but we all ignored him. It was a zombie-eat-human world; charity was for the weak. And any second, another wave of the undead might show up and take our booty.

  We ate all of Pete. He deserved it, the Judas. Betrayer. We took our time, savoring him like a seven-course meal. The sun went down and came up at least once, but we barely noticed. Pete’s blood kept us from freezing. Annie paused occasionally to reload and pick off approaching zombies. At some point, Guts retrieved Isaac and set him next to the body so the baby could take suck. Isaac whined and nestled against Pete’s chest.

  Afterward we lay around Pete’s hair, bones, teeth, and ball cap, his skeleton picked clean, a Thanksgiving turkey carcass. Hardly enough left for soup.

  “Could use floss,” Ros said.

  The sun was setting. I wanted to get up and move to the hotel, but Pete’s meat weighed me down. I rolled onto my back; the sky was purple; Venus was visible. The stars were popping out like fireflies. A plane whooshed by, flying low.

  A plane?

  “Captain,” Ros said, “that’s a bomber.”

  There was a human struggle in this war. I often forgot them. The other side. Enemy mine. How many of them were fighting for their lives that very minute? Scavenging for food and protecting their Isaacs. How many of them were looking up at those same stars-in Illinois, New York, Mexico, Iraq?

  It began to snow. It began to sleet. In the distance, an explosion. The stars disappeared.

  “They’re bombing Milwaukee,” Ros said.

  The humans’ retreat was over. War was back on.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  THEY BOMBED ALL night: firebombs, cluster bombs, smart bombs, cherry bombs, bang and boom, shock and awe. We loafed in the parking lot at our ease, observing the display. It was the Fourth of July and New Year’s Eve rolled into one. It was a song of destruction. The heat from the blasts kept us from turning into slushies.

  “Any undead in there are toast,” Ros said.

  It was just as well. What would they have done? Build cities? Design furniture? Form governments? Make pottery?

  Zombies are not creators. Zombies don’t manipulate and control the environment. We don’t organize day laborers or deplete the ozone layer. We don’t build dams or run for city council. We don’t play softball or pinball. We are Zen masters. Like a Venus flytrap, just give us meat and more meat.

  Feed me, Seymour!

  “Barely remember being human anymore,” Ros said. “I remember stuff that happened, but like in a movie.”

  Joan patted his shoulder. Her face was melted wax, her breasts pale shadows of their former stand-at-attention glory. She had fed three children with those dugs and they were rotting now, the worst kind of cancer.

  “I was in Baghdad,” Ros continued, “and one day, they were like, you’re going home, soldier. Bigger fish to fry in the States. I was glad to get out of the desert. Felt lucky to be alive and going home to Becky.”

  Annie rolled onto her stomach. Her pigtails were stained red and stiff with blood and guts. She looked like a girl the Ramones might have sung about.

  “But home was way worse than al-Qaeda,” Ros said. “Everyone dead or undead.”

  Used to be you were either alive or dead. Pregnant or not pregnant. Not anymore. Now everybody’s liminal. Everyone’s a transsexual.

  Annie made an hourglass figure with her hands and pointed to Ros. “Burrawwheee?” she asked.

  “Never found her,” he said.

  The bombing stopped, the ground rumbled. In the distance, an engine roared.

  “Tank,” Ros said.

  “Come and get us, scum suckers!” a voice yelled.

  My bite site tingled. The army was advancing, clanging a bell, making a racket. Their plan was obvious: Flush us out and shoot us.

  I pantomimed a vague plan of escape, anchored around this basic premise: Must Get Away Now! Guts gathered up Isaac and zoomed ahead. The rest of us picked our sorry selves off the ground and followed.

  Joan, Ros, Annie, and I plodded along, bringing pestilence, war, famine, and death-but at a glacial pace, the velocity of slugs. Call us the Four Retarded Horsemen of the Apocalypse. It might take us a while, but eventually we’ll kill and eat you. Relax while you wait-have a cannoli.

  Zombies emerged from houses and basements, from underneath piles of wood and rubble. Lured by the promise of human flesh, they headed straight into the military’s trap. We passed them on the street and I tried to look as many as possible in the eye, searching for a glimmer of light, anything brighter than the dirty yellow film that blinded them.

  There was nothing. No one home. They were deader than dead. At least they would keep the army occupied while we escaped. To where or what was another question.

  WE CONTINUED NORTH, away from the tanks. It was still snowing. Annie slipped and fell on the ice and it took all of us to get her up. Guts stayed a few blocks ahead, scouting locations, searching for humans, military or civilian, to either chomp on or avoid.

  We were in a state of nature now: kill or be killed.

  We passed a frozen zombie on the side of the road. Joan paused to examine it-the gender was indeterminate, the creature decayed to not much more than patches of skin and tendons clinging to a skeleton.

  More planes flew overhead. Leaflets dropped from one of them. ATTENTION, it read. THE OUTBREAK IS UNDER CONTROL. THE VIRUS IS CONTAINED. THE ENEMY IS BEING ISOLATED AND ELIMINATED. FOR YOUR OWN PROTECTION, STAY AWAY FROM URBAN AREAS. THE U.S. GOVERNMENT HAS SET UP BASES IN MOST STATES. TURN ON YOUR RADIO TO FIND THE ONE NEAREST YOU AND MAKE YOUR WAY THERE IMMEDIATELY. STAY IN OPEN AREAS AND BE ALERT AT ALL TIMES!

  At the bottom was a graphic of a stick-figure human running from a gang of zombies. The caption read: DO NOT APPROACH THE ENEMY. IF YOU CAN AVOID A CONFRONTATION BY RUNNING AWAY, THEN RUN AWAY. IF YOU ARE CORNERED, DESTROY THE ENEMY’S BRAIN BY SHOOTING, STABBING, BLUDGEONING, OR BURNING.

  “What’s it say?” Ros asked.

  I shook my head. It was too complicated and depressing to explain that we were a virus.

  “We’re losing,” Ros said.

  I nodded. We shuffled on, but it was becoming harder and harder to move. The wind felt like a wall and there was an inch of snow piled on my shoulder. We caught up to Guts and he handed me Isaac. The baby was frozen solid. An ice puck. I tossed him to Joan, who put him in her doctor’s bag.

  “Wait,” Ros said. We stopped. Annie swayed like a pine in the harsh winter wind. If we stayed still much longer, we’d freeze in the middle of the highway, and it was dawning on me that freezing was not our best option. At least not out in the open, where the army would eventually find us and blow our brains out.

  The best laid plans of zombies and men…

  Ros pointed east. “The lake,” he said. “Jump in the lake.”

  It was a good idea. Winter at the bottom of the lake, then walk into the sunshine come spring. Primordial creatures crawling out of the slime.

  We turned right and headed for Lake Michigan. We were survivors, refugees, and just desperate enough to take the Polar Bear Plunge.

  DOWNTOWN MANITOWOC WAS lovely. It’s on the lake, with a courthouse and a park with swings and a gazebo, plus a museum and marinas. It was white with snow, pure as a sno-globe winter scene. Stores lined the street: Urban Outfitters, Starbucks, the Gap, Williams-Sonoma, all of them with their windows broken and doors wide open. Money strewn on the floors. The credit card machines and cash registers silenced.

  Joan ushered us into an REI and Ros, our soldier, helped all of us select waterproof jackets, pants, and caps-anything to slow down the rate of decay. We could be underwater for months.

  Guts took off his jeans and T-shirt. His little body was ravaged. Lesions all over like an AIDS patient. Bruised pieces of flesh like old fruit. The duct tape hol
ding in his guts was coming undone; bullet holes dotted his back like stigmata.

  “Do I look like that?” Ros asked.

  Underneath our clothes, we all looked like that; underneath the patches Joan had sewn over our bullet holes, under my Jason-mask shoulder and Ros’s metal head and Joan’s suede knee and Annie’s patched ass, we were rotting corpses. We could never forget it.

  Joan opened her doctor’s bag. Isaac’s head popped out like a whack-a-mole. Thawed, immaculate, and as complete as the day he was born, he wouldn’t need any repairs.

  “Help us, Joan,” Ros said, holding out his hands in supplication. The Virgin Mary lawn statuary pose. Joan threaded her needle.

  She worked on Annie first and when the teenager was as good as new, I stationed her at the door. The army wasn’t too far behind us and we needed a guard. A few zombies tottered down the sidewalk, bunched together in groups of two or three. I made sure Annie understood she should look out for humans and alert me if any approached. She brought her hand to her forehead in a salute.

  I helped Joan with Guts, holding his intestines in place while she stitched his stomach. I considered removing his innards entirely. We could store them in a canopic jar, mummifying them for future archaeologists.

  Why not remove all of our vital organs, leaving only brains and bones? Intestines, liver, lungs, stomach, we didn’t need them. Isn’t that how King Tut remained so gloriously intact for centuries? Wouldn’t that preserve us?

  I walked like an Egyptian, trying to communicate my idea to Ros and Joan. In the distance, there were gunshots.

  “No time for dancing,” Ros said. “Army’s coming.”

  I looked over to Annie to see if she could give us a status update. She wasn’t there. I shook Ros’s elbow and pointed to where the teenage zombie had been.

  “Annie?” he asked. I shrugged my shoulders and shambled to the door. Outside, there was only the blue of the lake and a smattering of aimless corpses, wandering around like the people you see on television whose homes have been destroyed by tornadoes or hurricanes, standing in what used to be their living rooms, looking for birth certificates or wedding photos, any remains of their past lives.