ZOMBIE BOOKS

by Gnarly, Bart

  I was 19. She was 18. We were in love, and the whole world was ours.

  Immediately, I began talking of our first child. How I wanted a little girl. How I wanted to be a daddy. How I thought she would make an excellent mother. Penny was disappointingly silent on the topic, preferring to talk of jobs, and cars, and eventual house payments. But I didn’t care about those things. I wanted to be a father.

  Eventually, Penny saw it my way. We began trying for our first child.

  We tried.

  And tried.

  And tried.

  After two years, we told each other that these things take time.

  After three years, we talked of how some couples experience trouble having a child, but the ones who stick it out eventually get their wish.

  Our friends who wanted kids were all having them. Some were on their second child.

  It had been more almost four years.

  I was reluctant to consult a physician about our struggles. I was sure that eventually we would conceive on our own, but Penny was becoming progressively more frustrated with me. She insisted that we visit a fertility specialist. I expressed to her that my greatest fear was being told it was my fault, and hating myself for it, or knowing it was her fault and resenting her for not being able to give me what I so badly wanted.

  We agreed that if we couldn’t conceive on our own after five years of trying, we would see a doctor. I made her promise that if they wanted to test us for fertility, and one of us was infertile, that we would not be told who it was. “Either we are,” I had said, “or we are not capable of having a child. It doesn’t matter which of us it is. If we can’t as a couple then we can’t.” Penny said that we could always adopt if we could not have a child of our own. I agreed, but it didn’t feel the same to me.

  Five years came.

  The doctor gave us her thoughts.

  We were tested.

  The doctor said that the chance of us having a child were so slim that we shouldn’t bother preparing for the possibility.

  I was crushed.

  All I wanted in life was a spouse who loved me and a child who adored me. There was no worse news in existence than what had just been shared.

  I would never be a daddy.

  The topic of children stopped completely. Then mention of adoption became forbidden. My life seemed to crawl forward from that day as a slow march until death. I loved my wife, but without the possibility of fulfilling my life’s purpose, my existence became mechanical.

  I got up.

  I prepared.

  I went to my job.

  I worked.

  I came home.

  I slept.

  Repeat.

  Repeat.

  Repeat.

  Repeat.

  For the next ten years, all I did was exist. Penny had me in counseling. She had me on antidepressants. She tried to find me hobbies and distractions and entertainment. She bought a dog. She bought me an old fixer-upper car. She signed us up for photography classes.

  And I accepted all of these things. I played with the dog. I worked on my car. I took pictures. But all the while, I was dead inside. The smiles meant nothing. The laughs were hollow. The joy was faked. I was a walking corpse. I was as close to a zombie as anyone would ever see on this planet.

  Penny tried to distract me with pleasure. She bought a sex swing. And toys. She presented herself as open to everything, and proved good to every claim. Anything I wanted to try and more, we did it all. Tie-ups. Masks. Feathers. Video. She came home with a southern piercing. We had sex in public. Discreet sex, yes, but no less public. Penny told me that I could try it all, as long as I didn’t ask for another woman. And for those moments, I was blissfully distracted. But as soon as the curtains were pulled back and the sun shone upon my life again, I was reminded of who I really was: I was a failure of a man, who could never have a child.

  At twenty-nine years old, just weeks before my thirtieth birthday and a month before our eleventh anniversary, I attempted suicide. I tried to overdose on medication. The website where I got my information was wrong though, and all I accomplished was getting horribly sick and breaking trust with my wife. She had never felt so betrayed in all her life. Penny did not feel at all responsible for what I had done, like so many spouses in her shoes had. Instead, she gave me the lecture of my life.

  “You think I’ll stick around with a guy who goes and tries to kill himself?” she had asked, face red with frustration and hurt. “You think I will waste another ten years on a guy who I just might find in the bathtub because he finally figured out how to do it right? Fuck. You. I can’t handle that. Shit! I can’t handle this! I have babied you, and nursed you, and fucked you more times than I can remember. And this is what you do to me! Fuck! You!”

  I remember sitting there, numb to the world, as she railed on, breaking my alarm clock and throwing the contents of my dresser on the floor. In the end, when my reaction never came, she knelt before me and pleaded with me to never try that again. “I can’t live through this one more time,” she sobbed. “I need you. Please.”

  And something within me clicked. I may never be a father, but I was a husband. Penny became my little girl in that moment; the one who needed me. I would never have a daughter, but I knew what it was to be relied upon. Penny needed me, and I resolved to be there for her as best I could.

  That night, as I held her, I begged her to forgive me for being so stupid. I promised a new life for her, and she told me to shut up. “I don’t want a new life,” Penny said. “I want our life.”

  The darkness passed, and life began to have more meaning. We took trips, and spent money. Lots of it. We bought expensive gifts for each other on random days. I once gave her a motorcycle because, I told her, “It’s Tuesday.”

  And we were happy.

  Then, just after our sixteenth wedding anniversary, Penny started to get sick. She complained that she had never felt like this, and the sensation wasn’t going away. Nausea and vomiting. Lack of appetite, followed by feelings of starvation. We took her to see the doctor, and the new floored us both.

  Penny was pregnant.

  I was going to be a father. At thirty-five years old, I was finally going to be a daddy. I didn’t care how. I didn’t care why. I had weathered the storm. I was a father, and that was all that mattered.

  Penny, in the other hand, spiraled into a deep depression. She lamented that she was too old to be a mother now. She tried to keep a brave face for me, but I could see it in her eyes: She was scared. I heard comments like, “What if it kills me?” and “What if it comes out retarded?” and “My eggs are too old. It’s going to be riddled with birth defects.” I answered every concern as lovingly as I could, though I harbored some resentment. She was killing my happiness. Couldn’t she see how amazing this was? Couldn’t she see how great and miraculous it was that we, we were going to have a baby? It was supposed to be impossible. It was supposed to never happen. But here we are! And now she’s ruining it with her darkness.

  I tried to remember how Penny had been there for me when I was down. I tried to recall how I had spoiled so many of her moments, and how she had borne it all in loving silence. And so I held her and whispered how everything would be alright. I tried to not seem too excited as she began to show and Penny seemed to slowly warm to the idea of being a mommy. I would catch her singing to her belly, and talking to it all the time.

  We were a family now.

  The day came, and the delivery was smooth. No real complications. No issues. One day we were two, and the next, we were three.

  It was a little girl.

  We named her Eleanor.

  My life finally felt like it had begun. My feelings for my wife deepened. My heart swelled at every touch from my precious little Ella. I was fulfilling my purpose.

  I took to calling her the miracle child. The child that was never supposed to have been. The one that refused to stay out of existence. She was feisty, and clever, and beautiful. She was every
reason I loved her mother and every reason I wanted to be alive.

  I was falling in love again, with both of them, and I had never been happier.

  Five years later, the reports began to come in. The television told of men eating each other in the streets. I was horrified, but Penny thought it was funny. “C’mon, Stu,” she had giggled. “A homeless weirdo tackles and eats a guy in the street? Sure it’s gross, but it’s kinda funny. Right? How often do you get to hear about random acts of cannibalism in America?” She laughed, but I couldn’t. Eating a person? In the street? While they died? I couldn’t comprehend it.

  Then more reports came in.

  Penny stopped laughing.

  Then even more stories of killing, cannibalism, and sickness. Stories of people who could not be killed, walking the streets and attacking whoever they could find.

  Words like, “infected” were being thrown around. Reporters warned that if you saw an infected person, you should not attempt to confront them. We were told to just run. We were told that there is no stopping them. No killing them and no surviving their attack. If you encounter one, it will kill you. You would become like them, killing, eating, and terrorizing.

  Life as everyone had ever known it was about to be over.

  We were living in Yakima, Washington at the time. I began to store food and fortify the house. If the infection reached us, I wanted to be protected. Many of my friends drove north into Canada and the wilderness, but I preferred to stay in a safe place and make our stand here.

  Penny became catatonic. She told me how she thought this was a zombie outbreak. How these stories never ended well. How this would be the death of us all. How it would be better if we killed ourselves then have to live through this. I remembered back, puking my guts out and praying for a death that wasn’t coming.

  Never again.

  I told Penny about how I needed her. Ella needed her. How we would make it through this if we stuck together, but we had to be a team.

  I can’t say that I ever really thought I got through to her.

  Then the killing began in Washington. Reports came in that a group of men had shot and killed a boy in the city of Vancouver, just north of Portland, Oregon. The parents of the boy claimed he was just walking home, but the men swore he was a zombie. And it only got worse from there. Soon, shootings were happening across the state. No one knows when the zombies officially arrived, but there was a week of shootings and murders before any reports of actual zombie behavior. I panicked and decided that I had to go out and find more food and ammo. Penny quietly agreed, and I was gone. All day I searched for supplies. The stores were tapped-out. The warehouses were empty. Looters were rioting in the streets. Fires burned unchecked. A guy tried to steal my car as I drove it. I had to fire my pistol in the air to get him to leave. I raced home, happy to be alive but fearful of our future.

  The first thing I noticed when entering was how quiet the house was. “Pen?” I called. No response. The kitchen was empty. The hall was clear. I moved to the bedroom and saw Penny standing in front of the bed, her back to me. “Pen?” I asked again. Slowly she turned her head, and the expression on her face made me shudder with chills. She looked alabaster. Stone. Dead. In her hand was a box of saran wrap. The box slipped from her weak grip, and fell to the floor. “Pen, I…”

  And then I saw her. Eleanor. Her head was wrapped in plastic. Her little round face was contorted and purple. She was just lying there, on the bed, like a horrid Halloween prop. All of the air left my body. I collapsed to my knees.

  My daughter was dead.

  Penny moved to my side and drew my pistol from its holster.

  I didn’t care.

  She stepped back, and said, “First me, then you.” As she raised the gun to her mouth she told me how we would see Ella on the other side.

  The gun went off.

  Her body collapsed to the floor.

  I just knelt there, unable to move.

  Penny’s blood flowed from her convulsing body in shuddering gushes. I stared at her foot, inches from me, the ringing in my ears providing a demented sound track to the end of my life.

  I couldn’t speak.

  I couldn’t look at either of their faces.

  Banging noises filled the house. Fists pounding on doors and hands breaking glass.

  Rage came. Rage like darkness. Rage like a storm. Rage that leveled civilizations and tore down the pillars of the earth.

  Rage.

  How dare they interrupt my death?

  How dare they soil the ground where they lay?

  I grabbed my bat and headed to the living room.

  What I remember comes back in short bursts, like clips form a morbid film running in my mind. The sound of the aluminum clanging against skulls. The screams of dying men. The crack of bones and the sickly-sweet smell of blood filling the home. I beat them until they were unrecognizable. Zombies? Humans? Did it matter? My life was over, and they had not even given me the chance to die in peace.

  When I finally stopped long enough to look around, the scene didn’t affect me at all. The bodies. The pieces. The blood. The viscera. The stains on the furniture, floors, walls, and ceiling. None of it mattered.

  I turned back to the hallway, ready to die, but found that I was unable to move.

  I couldn’t go in there.

  Not again.

  I couldn’t see them like that.

  Penny.

  Eleanor.

  I froze, but I didn’t feel. No tears. No quivering. No heartache. I was dead inside. The room was not to be feared, in my mind. It was to be revered. That bedroom was sacred. It was the tomb of my life. Buried there were the sum of my life’s hopes, dreams, and accomplishments. I had to preserve it. I had to protect it.

  I flooded the property with fuel, and put the house to the torch.

  I didn’t feel the need to run. I didn’t feel the call to action. I just left. I took my bat, and I left. I began to walk the streets, until I met the highway. Then I walked the highway. I stole food to live, and wandered without direction.

  With the first zombie I encountered, I didn’t see the face of a dead man. I saw the face of my wife, of my little girl, of the people they could have been. This zombie did not kill my family. Every zombie killed my family.

  So I murdered it. I attacked and killed it.

  I had heard reports that getting zombie by-product on your skin could infect you. For some reason I cared and always wore long sleeves and a face shield. Maybe I wanted to choose my own time of death. Maybe I wanted to live forever. But I didn’t consider these things as I slammed the staggering thing which used to have a life. All that I saw was red.

  For days, I wandered the highway, stealing, killing, and sleeping in whatever hidey-hole I could find. I attacked single zombies. Groups of zombies. It didn’t matter to me. The blackness came, I killed, and the blackness went.

  One day, in eastern Washington, I encountered two men in coveralls and full-face motorcycle helmets.

  “I’m Pete,” said the taller one. “An’ this is Duck. You got someplace to stay, friend?”

  It hadn’t occurred to me until that moment that I hadn’t spoken since my girls died. I stared at the man, and I couldn’t see a reason to start speaking now.

  “You talk, buddy?” asked the one called Duck. I just continued to stare at the two of them. The one called Pete gave me a sour look, then told me if I wanted to come with them I could, but I would have to clean up. I looked down and saw that I was covered in old, browning bloodstains.

  He never asked about my past.

  He never asked about the tomb.

  He never asked whose blood it was.

  I followed them back to a factory. He told me that they had made it their goal to find the best ways to kill zombies.

  And for the first time in weeks, I smiled.

  CHAPTER 7

  What it cost

  “If their blood gets on you kid, you’re dead.”

  Peter shifts un
comfortably in his wheelchair as I snare the dead man in the cage, who moans horridly and bangs his head on the cyclone fencing. A flick of the wrist, a pull of the handle, and I have him under my control.

  “Easy,” Peter warns.

  I give the catchpole a push and the zombie backs away from the cage door. I remove the bolt, lift the handle, and let the door swing open.

  It’s just me and the deady.

  The zombie looks at me with faded eyes. I used to think that once I was close enough to them, I would look into their eyes and see the small flicker that was a remainder of a soul; like a lone candle burning in an empty house.

  I got over that idea rather quickly.

  Zombies have eyes like dead fish: They’re there, and they clearly work, but there’s no life in them.

  It’s true that the zombies see everything and process nothing. Peter and I have seen shufflers scan the room, studying everything while turning a circle in their cage. They would invariably make several full rotations, giving everything the same level of concentration each time, despite the fact that they were looking at the same items over and over. Peter had suggested that zombies do little more than constantly scan for food. As soon as either of us would enter the main floor of the mill, all a zombie had to do was smell us and it would lock in on blood. Nothing else seemed to matter. To the undead, the meal was all that held value. Zombies with a lot of life left would smash the walls of their cyclone prison and rage against the barrier. The older ones, weaker and more sluggish, would walk into the fencing over and over, bouncing off the chain-link and murmuring pathetically. This and every degree of activity in-between was witnessed each time we approached a caged dead-head.

  “The meal,” Peter had said, “is all that matters. It’s the perfect loving relationship,” he chuckled. “They will literally only have eyes for you.”