by Becker
“Jesus,” Green Cap said.
Here I am, I thought, resurrected and full of grace.
Green Cap took a step backward. It was fight-or-flight time, and it looked like he was going to fly.
Ros cleared his throat; it sounded like the glub of the Loch Ness Monster, a creature whose existence I’m currently rethinking. Because if zombies exist, why not Nessie?
“We come in peace,” Ros said.
Annie and Joan inched toward Green Cap, each step painfully slow, stroke victims learning to walk again. Annie brandished a rope, lasso-style. Guts tucked Isaac back into his pram.
“Holy Mother of God,” Green Cap said, and turned and ran. Guts followed suit, and the chase was on.
What a miracle Guts was. He dove for Green Cap’s feet and tackled him before they reached the cul-de-sac.
And poor Guts. Longing illuminated his urchin’s face, but he could only sit on top of the human until the rest of us reached them. No biting, no touching, like a lap dance.
Green Cap was thin; he probably hadn’t eaten a Hot Pocket in days. He looked like Paul Bunyan. His hair was long and matted underneath the John Deere cap and his beard was wild and woolly. He was wearing jeans, a flannel shirt, a down vest, and Timberland work boots. He was a survivor, all right. Who knew how many of us he’d fought off? Hundreds, at least.
He punched Guts in the face. He wrapped his hands around Guts’s neck and choked him, trying to poke his thumbs into our little guy’s eyes. Guts bared his teeth, snapping at Green Cap’s thumbs.
And one small bite is all it takes…
“Don’t do it,” Ros warned him.
“This can’t be happening,” Green Cap said. He let go of Guts’s neck and propped himself up on his elbows, ignoring the adorable zomboy perched on his chest. He watched us approach. By now, we were halfway down the driveway. “Are you all zombies?” he asked.
“We like brains,” Ros admitted.
“Is this really happening?” Green Cap asked.
“You better believe it,” Ros said.
“Why are you talking?” Green Cap asked.
“Why are you?”
Green Cap rested his head on the concrete. “Then it’s over,” he mumbled, “if they can think.”
Here’s my favorite recipe. Pretend you’re reading Like Water for Chocolate.
Ingredients: One human, warm and alive, preferably wriggling, maybe screaming.
Preparation: Using both hands, hold human firmly in place. Take a big bite. Chew. To enhance flavor, let pieces of flesh and viscera swing from mouth.
Repeat until human is a pile of bones.
But I couldn’t do it. It was triumph-of-the-will time. Mind over matter. Brain over brains.
I had a mantra and it was this: Do not eat the human…Do not eat the human…Do not eat the human…Do not eat…
Eve’s moans were at a fever pitch, loud enough to attract our brethren. She needed a sock in her maw. Pronto. I signaled as much to Joan, putting my hand over my mouth and nodding in Eve’s direction. The old gal did a 180, back to the garage, almost creaking as she turned. She was a dutiful zombie, a first-class minion.
We were almost to the end of the driveway. The Trail of a Thousand Zombie Tears.
“Brains,” Ros said. “Mmmmmmm.”
Ros’s arms were outstretched; he was slipping into character, losing cognition. I grabbed his elbow and shook him. Forcing him to face me, I made the peace sign, then pointed the two fingers to my eyes, then to his eyes, signaling: Look at me. Stay with me.
Do not eat the human…Do not eat the human…Do not eat the human…Do not eat…
Saint Joan muffled Eve’s moans. The suburb was quiet save for Green Cap’s sobbing. No snow shovels hit concrete; no children cried “Ollie ollie oxen free.” There were no dogs barking or screen doors slamming or cars revving. No middle-aged women power-walking or Mormons knocking on doors.
No one was left.
We reached Green Cap. Guts jumped off him and helped Annie hog-tie his ankles and wrists together.
“Why are you doing this?” Green Cap asked.
“You drive,” Ros said.
“You want me to be your chauffeur?”
We nodded.
“None of you can drive?” he asked.
“Too hard,” Ros said.
I took out my pad, wrote this down, and held it in front of Green Cap’s eyes:
Dear Sir,
Don’t be afraid. Although we covet your brains, we need you to drive us to Chicago. And please, call me Jack.
“Holy shit,” Green Cap said, looking up at me.
“Nice man,” Ros said. “He’ll drive.”
Green Cap wiggled on the driveway like a worm. Annie and Guts had done a fine job with the rope. “Don’t see that I have a choice,” he said. “How many like you are there?”
I shrugged my shoulders.
“We’re special,” Ros said.
I pointed at the note, like the ghost of Christmas future forcing Ebenezer Scrooge to look at his own grave.
“Okay, Jack,” Green Cap said. “You can call me Pete. I used to be an electrician but now I’m a survivor. A good one too. After the evacuation, I ruled all of King’s Court.” He lifted his chin as if to encompass the entire subdivision.
“Not anymore,” Ros said.
Up the street, a flash of color, along with a fresh tingling in my shoulder. The feral. I nodded at Annie and Guts and they took off, Guts running ahead, Annie lagging behind with the rifle over her shoulder.
Saint Joan came walking down the driveway, swinging her doctor’s bag and winking like a kind, matronly nurse in a World War I movie.
Compared to the Zombie Apocalypse, World War I was a walk in the park. Forget trench warfare and machine guns. Forget Woodrow Wilson and A Farewell to Arms. Hell, forget World War II and Hiroshima while you’re at it. Remove genocide and the postwar baby boom from your mind.
Now is the only thing that’s real.
“Leave Eve,” Ros said.
“Groooaaamph,” I said, meaning, “Perhaps.”
I wondered if humans still did it, the old in-out. And whether Pete was lonely in his barren subdivision. Were matters of the flesh and heart important to him? Were there Jews left in Israel?
Did the Holy Land ever even exist in the first place?
I wrote Pete another note: We need to find Howard Stein, creator of the virus. Is he still alive? Take us to him.
“Stein. Him,” Pete said. “Killed by a mob, apparently. Of humans, mind you, not the undead. This is word-of-mouth info—no more CNN—so I can’t vouch for the truth of it. But yeah. His own kind turned on him.”
“Go on,” Ros said, and coughed up some black goop.
“From what I heard,” Pete continued, glancing at Ros, “zombies controlled most of the city. A group of scientists and politicians were holed up in a building downtown and Stein was their leader, for a time. Guess he said that since he created them, he knew how to fight them. Food started running low, tempers high, and at some point they realized they weren’t holed up but trapped.”
“Stupid humans,” Ros said, shaking his head. “Typical.”
“Long story short, they decided Stein was the cause of their misery, so they took revenge. Can’t say I blame them. They threw him over the fire escape, right into the stenches below.”
Teeming masses. Quiet desperation.
“He didn’t even hit the ground, there were so many of them. Of you, I mean. Gobbled him right up. Apparently, there was nothing left.”
So Nietzsche was right: God is dead. And I had been looking forward to meeting my maker. He would have listened to me, understood my worth. I sat down in the driveway.
Ros must have seen the disappointment in my face. “We’ve still got each other, captain,” he said. “We’ll make it.”
I stood up, gathering myself for the troops. They were counting on me to lead them.
I wrote: Take us where we want to go. Or else
!
Pete squeezed his eyes shut. A tear traveled down his cheek.
I nudged his head with my toe. His eyes opened; I bit the air and moaned. I was a fierce and hungry zombie. A fiend. Hear me roar!
“Kill me,” he said. “Just kill me already.”
“No way, José,” Ros said. “You drive.”
Pete sighed. “Fine,” he said. “Where to?”
Chicago, I wrote. I had to see it for myself.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
BRAINS! BRAINS, I tell you. We needed a thalamus for the road. A frontal lobotomy. A side of cerebellum. A medulla oblongata. Anything to take our minds off the meat of Pete, who was lying supine on the street, curled in the cul-de-sac, a lamb for us wolves, as open and available as any whore.
Ros, Joan, and I waited for Annie and Guts to return. We did the zombie dance, circling around Pete like Native Americans in a peyote trance. I paused and wrote down my thoughts like a self-help housewife:
This is my affirmation journal. My dream book. Captain’s Log: Stardate: Zombie Apocalypse. Do not eat the human!
There was a gunshot followed by silence. Moans wafted through the subdivision like wind through an Aeolian harp.
Guts turned the corner onto Pawn Way. He was skipping, the feral’s leg slung over one shoulder like a hobo’s stick.
“Annie?” Ros asked, and Guts jerked his thumb in the direction he came from, imitating our gait and throwing in a few robotic dance moves and a moon walk. Show-off. He pulled a handful of brains out of his jeans pocket, which he proffered to me with his customary bow.
I smashed the red, hot sweetness into my face with both hands, smearing it on my cheeks. I could not get those brains into my mouth fast enough.
If I could breathe, I would have panted.
Ros and Joan went to town on the leg. From the garage, Eve resumed her moaning.
“Shut her up,” Ros said.
Annie returned from the hunt, dragging the rest of the girl behind her by a rope; intestines hung around Annie’s neck, bouncing against her budding breasts like Mardi Gras beads. Isaac stood, gripping the edge of his carriage, and shrieked. It was a loud and piercing sound.
“Stupid zombies,” Ros said, a big toe hanging out the side of his mouth like a cigar stub. “Too loud.”
Guts, our little caretaker, our golden boy, he gave Isaac the spleen. The baby sucked on it like a bottle.
“God help me,” Pete said. “Here she comes.”
I turned to see Eve shuffling toward Pete, her arms outstretched. The bandage had fallen off her stump of a wrist and it looked like a giant used tampon, black with blood. The senseless wench, the garden hose was still wrapped around her ankle. Her eyes were entirely yellow, as jaundiced as Marge Simpson. It was hard to believe I once loved her.
“Help!” Pete said, thrashing in an attempt to free himself.
“Only make it worse,” Ros said.
Eve was almost upon him. Pete gagged when she growled. Oh, it was a close call. I contemplated shambling over there to restrain Eve, but, near as she was to her prey, I would never make it in time.
“Don’t forget, Jack,” Pete said. “You need me.”
“Annie, get your gun,” Ros said. Annie looked to me and I lifted a finger.
One bang and Eve’s brains kaplooied all over Pete’s face.
Muahahahaha, we all laughed. Like Count Chocula, it was a parody of villainous laughter, a simulacrum of evil mirth. Even Isaac was amused.
“Careful, Pete,” Ros said. “That stuff’s toxic.”
“I am so fucked,” Pete said, weeping into the concrete.
Welcome to the club, buddy.
PETE SAID GAS was getting scarce, but we had a full tank, plus a few cans we siphoned out of cars back in King’s Court. We cruised east in a family van—the crew was in the back; I rode shotgun with Pete. There were so many obstacles in the road—body parts and zombies and cars—it was slow going.
None of us was wearing seatbelts. The glove compartment was stuffed with intestines and tendons and I had bite-sized bits of brain stored in my professor pockets. A McDonald’s wrapper crunched under my feet; a copy of The Zombie Survival Guide was on the dash. In the back, Saint Joan stitched everyone up.
“She a doctor?” Pete asked.
No one answered.
I opened a book I’d found back in the subdivision, ’Salem’s Lot, Stephen King’s vampire novel. As an academic, I had always thought King was beneath me. A typist, not a writer, to paraphrase Capote on Kerouac. I hadn’t even felt it necessary to read him to form my opinion, though of course I’d seen the movies. I believed that anything with mass appeal was inherently bad, not only King, but Michael Jackson, Harry Potter, and the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders. In my view, popularity proved inferiority, not worth.
But fifty million Elvis fans can’t be wrong. The book was solid pop fiction, a page-turner, proving there was no such thing as a guilty pleasure anymore. I was eating people just like everyone else; that made us equal. I had become mainstream, a plebeian, the lowest common denominator, and I didn’t care. In fact, it was liberating.
“Pete,” Ros called from the backseat, tapping on the driver’s headrest, “radio.”
Pete turned the dial. Squawks. The honk of the Emergency Broadcast System. Another preacher. The Violent Femmes’ “Blister in the Sun.”
“Love this song,” Ros said, bobbing his metal head.
“Who the hell is broadcasting this shit?” Pete asked.
“Why? What would you play?” Ros said.
“I’d give advice. Warnings. I’d try to help people. Tell ’em where to go. How to survive.”
“Yeah,” Ros gurgled, “get in a car with a bunch of zombies.”
Pete looked in the rearview mirror. “It’s a case of do as I say,” he began.
Ros snarled and barked and Pete leaned forward as far as he could, his chest pressed against the steering wheel; Ros and Guts high-fived.
We rolled into the city and slowed to a crawl. Zombies surrounded us, rocking the vehicle, trying to plunder our human. The van inched forward.
“Punch it,” Ros said. “Put the pedal to the metal.”
I shook my head, pointing at Ros and then at the crowd. I turned my hand into a puppet and mimed talking, the thumb acting as the lower lip and the rest of the fingers yammering away. It was the signal Lucy used to give me whenever she was on the phone with her mother, a woman who lived to complain.
“No way,” Ros said.
A zombie pressed her face against my window. She was chalk-white and covered with green and black bruises. She didn’t look real; she looked like someone dressed up for Halloween.
I took out my pad and pen, wrote a quick note, and handed it to Pete.
“‘Recruit them,’” Pete read. “‘And ask about Stein.’”
“Bad idea,” Ros said. “They’ll get Pete.”
“I agree,” Pete said. “We should leave. Immediately.”
I put my hands together in a pleading gesture. We couldn’t see the street anymore, couldn’t see Chicago’s famed buildings or the sidewalks. All we could see were zombies, thicker than fog. But we had to try.
“‘Need more soldiers,’” I wrote and Pete read out loud. “‘That’s an order.’”
“Yes, sir,” Ros said, and slid open the van door. Arms groped inside like cilia.
“Annie?” Ros said, and Annie nailed a few in the head. Ros closed the door after him.
My window was stained with blood. I cracked it open but heard only the mob. Ros, if he was talking, was inaudible. Pete turned on the windshield wipers.
“I can’t hear anything,” he yelled, sticking his finger in his ear. “Those gunshots.”
I turned around. Joan made a clucking sound, covered her ears, and indicated to Annie that she should holster her guns. Guts was kneeling on the seat vacated by Ros, his face and hands against the glass, trying to keep an eye on our soldier. I tugged on his shirt and he looked at me. I smiled, but
he didn’t smile back. He looked worried and angry, afraid that we’d lost Ros.
“I don’t like this,” Pete said. “Not one bit.”
The door opened and Ros fell into the van. Guts scrambled out of his way as zombies spilled in like lemmings. Joan, Guts, Ros, and Annie fought them off, kicking them, Annie hitting their heads with the butt of her rifle.
“Drive!” Ros said. He pushed the last one out the door with his combat boot.
Pete took off. There were so many zombies we had no choice but to plow right through them. Their bodies thudded against the bumper, the van bouncing along as if on a lunar landscape.
“Too many,” Ros said. “Crushed me.”
Zombies could survive on the moon, I thought. We don’t need oxygen or water. We could be happy there, lying on our backs in a crater, watching the earth spin in its lazy circle. Or better still, we could escape gravity and float through space for eternity, witnessing the births and deaths of galaxies and stars. Waltzing to the pulse of red dwarfs and quarks. Joining the tail of a comet and traveling to the beginning of time, we could meet God there.
Eat God there too.
“They didn’t understand,” Ros said. “Stupid zombies.”
I missed Lucy. And I missed being human. We were part of something larger now, something as timeless and inevitable as death. Or as death used to be. We had already changed the world.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
WE DROVE NORTH on 41, following the shoreline, running away. It was Plan B, but I had to separate us from the throng in Chicago. I needed solitude to think.
Out the window was Lake Michigan, big as the ocean. The sky was battleship gray and cloudless, and the water was choppy, with whitecaps surfacing here and there like fierce fish. There weren’t any birds.
For miles and miles, there was nothing but zombies. At night, the thinner ones froze. During the day, what with the sun and global warming, they thawed and wandered around.
Our future as northerners was predictable: freeze in the winter; reanimate in the spring. Like tulips.
There’s resurrection in April, T. S. Eliot’s cruelest month, breeding lilacs and zombies out of the dead land.