ACT
TWO
The Life of Death
ELEVEN YEARS
Zombie was a word Etta Hoffmann first heard at 189–07:33—one hundred and eighty-nine days after 10/23, at seven thirty-three in the morning. The woman who’d uttered it said she was calling from the Cathedral of Learning at the University of Pittsburgh, where students from Pitt and Carnegie Mellon had jury-rigged a Wi-Fi signal after months of wearying work and treacherous supply runs. Hoffmann was surprised. Her ability to be surprised had not yet run out. Humans, a species in which she’d only ever held but moderate interest, impressed her now almost daily.
The woman from Pitt introduced herself as Andrea West. She said her party had accessed a patchy, skeletal, command-line rendition of the internet that expert coders, of which her party had several, could navigate, given excesses of patience and time. Eventually, they found the phone number Hoffmann had seeded on multiple government sites along with the message: ARE YOU OK? CALL ME.
Hoffmann took down all Andrea West had to say, though little of it was new. Two others Hoffmann had spoken to in the half year following 10/23 referred to the back-from-the-dead residual internet as “the Corpse Web,” so that was how she referenced it in her notes. As a concept, the internet had always bedeviled Etta Hoffmann. In spite of being built from cables and circuits, it pumped the fluids of humanity’s hopes, fears, kindnesses, and cruelties. It had lived, so it made sense to her that, like human bodies, it had returned from demise.
Like everyone else, Andrea West claimed to have called to gather intel, but by then, Hoffmann knew everyone’s real reason. Andrea West wanted to tell her story, hoping her life and death might matter. Everything she said went into one of Hoffmann’s typed reports, though the only detail to stick with Hoffmann was zombies. Not things, not ghouls, not white-eyes, not demons, not gangs. Zombies: it felt right. Perhaps it was the finality of the letter Z, the end of the alphabet, just plain The End.
It was not until 286–13:21, after another dozen uses of the word by others, that Hoffmann chose to investigate it. What compelled her was not curiosity so much as economy. She had the AMLD Lending Library at her disposal; therefore, she ought to use it. The library was composed of books and movies she’d found in staff offices and desks. She’d begun with an office at the northwestern corner on the second floor and worked her way west to east, top to bottom. She organized every item by subject, on shelves in the VSDC office.
The Lending Library’s DVD and Blu-ray collection was promising, Her evening routine pre-10/23 had been to consume TV shows, one episode after another, like a bag of M&M’s. But in the entire building, Hoffmann found not a single complete series, and she knew it would keep her up at night if she had to skip episodes of a show, or even worse, never know how it ended. She’d stick with watching movies, played on one of a handful of computers still equipped with disc drives.
The books filled five shelving units. An unforeseen number of employees had lurid interests. Was it related to living in D.C.? She looked up zombie in The Encyclopedia Macabre. Drawn from the Kongo word nzambi, it was an implausible, but confirmed as authentic, practice of the Haitian Vodoun. Authorized by a Bizango council, a chemist known as a bokor infected a wrongdoer with tetrodotoxin, a poison extracted from certain blowfish. After suffering deathlike paralysis, the victim was buried, then unburied and revived as a slow-thinking slave, never to reach the final resting spot of lan guinée, the leafy heaven of Africa. The Vodoun believed the bokor stole the victim’s ti bon ange, the dynamic part of the soul.
Hoffmann pondered this long enough to disrupt her daily procedures, the most important of which was the cataloging and cross-indexing of the growing collection of survivors’ stories, which she called Personal Histories, Andrea West’s entry posed a dilemma. Were most people aware of the Haitian nzambi? She did not know and therefore could not say if those who’d embraced the word zombie did so cognizant of its etymology.
By 372–06:00, over a year since 10/23, Etta Hoffmann’s conclusions were solid enough to type up, print out, and slide into a folder that served as an ongoing foreword to the collection which she’d titled (not out of ego but because it was descriptive) the Hoffmann Archive of Tales from the New World.
Her verdict was that there was no word more fitting for the 10/23 phenomenon. Here was the single, salient, doomful point: a Vodoun zombie had been judged by a Bizango counsel to deserve his fate. This new world, in which everyone was fated to become a zombie, implied the entire population of the world had been likewise judged.
For what sins? Hoffmann suspected the classic ones, Gluttony. Pride. Envy. Wrath. Greed. Sloth. Lust. Most people on Earth would have willingly relinquished their ti bon ange for superficial trappings. Hoffmann wondered if she should feel cheated: she’d indulged in none of these sins, yet received the same sentence. No, she decided. Living alone in the American Model of Lineage and Dimensions building ten years after 10/23, Etta Hoffmann was more content than ever.
* * *
Her serenity had had a single, but plenty disruptive, wrinkle. Six months ago, 4,095–4:55 to be precise, a woman had contacted Hoffmann via VSDC’s landline. Not since the very first call, ten years before, had the ringing phone so startled her, There had not been a Personal History to take down in ten months, Hoffmann had to dry her palms before picking up the receiver, to clear her throat before saying hello.
Right away, she determined this caller was different. Since Year Eight, voices of survivors had been hushed, by habit and suspicion. Many concealed their names, believing the number they’d found on the Corpse Web to be a trap. But this woman’s voice was open and clear, and she introduced herself by name. Hoffmann, however, did not trust that name, and preferred to think of the woman as Snoop.
Snoop did not want to talk. Snoop wanted to snoop. It had been ten years since anyone had asked Hoffmann questions. Closer to thirty years, really; she’d still been a teen when doctors issued their final diagnoses and her parents quit trying to reach her. Snoop reminded Hoffmann of the psychologists of her youth, placid and mild. No one was placid and mild anymore. Hoffmann was flustered. She’d grown skilled at drawing forth information—a regular Rochelle Glass, minus the outrage—but with Snoop, she had to pull out the Personal History Conversation Guide she’d typed, printed, and laminated back in Year One. Tell Me Where You Are. Tell Me How You Got There. Tell Me The Last Thing That Happened.
Snoop, devilish woman, turned the questions around.
“I’ve heard about you,” Snoop said. “What’s your name?”
Hoffmann referred to her guide. “Are You In Immediate Danger?”
“People say you’ve been collecting stories. How long you been doing that?”
“Who Else Is With You?”
“Ten years of stories could be really important. You could help a lot of people understand how we got here. Where are you located?”
“What Experiences Do You Remember Most?”
“You’re nervous about telling me. I understand. Keeping a secure location secret makes a ton of sense. And yours must be super secure to have lasted so long! You’ve got a D.C. phone number. Which makes me guess you’re in a government building?”
“Tell Me About The People You Have Lost.”
This was how it went, every time, Eventually, Snoop had to go. Either her battery was dying or she had other calls to make. Both excuses intrigued Hoffmann. If Snoop had devised a reliable form of communication, that info belonged in the Hoffmann Archive. Furthermore, if Snoop was using her tech to converse with multitudes, those people might supply a new age of Personal Histories. Yet Hoffmann resisted making requests. It was not pride. It was concern over her requests being leveraged toward a quid pro quo. Snoop was right: in ten years, Hoffmann had never divulged her name or location.
That day, however, she’d leaked clues. She hadn’t meant to. Snoop rang every few weeks, and Hoffmann, neither in the habit nor position to refuse calls, could feel herself wearing down
from Snoop’s incessant goodwill. When Hoffmann shied away from big questions, Snoop asked small ones. What food did she miss? Did she hate, like Snoop did, scraping candle soot off the ceiling? Snoop hit the jackpot unwittingly.
“What TV shows did you like?”
“Old ones,” Hoffmann replied instantly.
“Yeah? Me and my mom watched a ton of old TV growing up. What were your favorites?”
“The Andy Griffith Show. Star Trek. The Dick Van Dyke Show. Lassie. I Love Lucy. Perry Mason. My Three Sons. The Honeymooners. Mister Ed. Petticoat Junction. Rawhide. Father Knows Best. This Is Your Life.”
“Whoa,” Snoop laughed, “That’s a lot of words for you. You need to sit down?”
“I am sitting down,” Hoffmann said, but her heart was racing.
“I’m not sure I could watch them again,” Snoop sighed. “I’d keep worrying there were zombies outside Lucy and Desi’s window. Or the Star Trek gang was only in space because zombies had taken over Earth. Or Mister Ed wouldn’t say anything to Wilbur except how royally he’s fucked. You know what I mean, lady? Hey, I’m still calling you lady. Come on. Tell me your name.”
“Etta Hoffmann.” She was trying to breathe.
“Etta. Well, Etta, it’s nice to meet another fan of Old Hollywood.”
Hoffmann thought she heard a pause in Snoop’s reply, perhaps as she jotted down the words Etta Hoffmann. Her throat constricted, her sight blackened, she felt hot. She reacted to nothing else Snoop asked that day. After Snoop hung up, sounding a little hurt, Hoffmann sat motionless for an hour, repeating to herself how stupid she was. Snoop had tricked her, If enough synapses of the old internet still fired in the Corpse Web, a full name was a key to a thousand locks.
Yet the next time Snoop called, Hoffmann’s heart leaped, and she spoke to her again, gladly.
In bed at night, she whipped herself with questions.
Did she actually like being snooped on?
What if Snoop asked Hoffmann’s name because Snoop honestly liked her?
Had anyone ever liked Hoffmann before?
Was it all right to want to be liked?
* * *
In the years before 10/23, Hoffmann hadn’t understood friendship, but it hadn’t mattered—no one wanted to be her friend. Prior to Snoop’s calls, Hoffmann’s friendship fantasies focused on Annie Teller. Hoffmann wanted to excuse her interest in Annie Teller as being connected to the LaBr3aTarP1t$ password that paved the way for the Hoffmann Archive, but she did not like lying to herself. It was more than that.
As had been the case when Annie Teller roamed the halls in large, confident strides despite her telltale limp, Hoffmann had no desire to speak to her; it might crack the perfection Hoffmann attributed to the senior statistician, Hoffmann had, however, imagined being Tawna Maydew, that chubby, rose-cheeked California blonde who, upon seeing Annie Teller arrive at the La Brea Tar Pits, would smile in that sensual way Hoffmann couldn’t smile, feel love in her heart Hoffmann couldn’t feel, and embrace Annie Teller in ways Hoffmann would never dare.
Had the La Brea reunion ever happened? Again, Hoffmann eschewed lying; it probably hadn’t, America’s travel infrastructure had been the first thing to go haywire after 10/23, and Los Angeles was a long, long way from D.C, But anytime Hoffmann retrieved a phone message from a woman with an English accent, her heart would make a froggy leap as she believed, for a second, it was Annie Teller reporting she and Tawna Maydew were together and happy, having built a love nest inside of the La Brea Tar Pits museum, where they held each other each night beneath a mammoth skeleton’s tusks.
Hoffmann wondered if it would be considered pitiful that the workstation she used every day was Annie Teller’s. Using it had made logical sense for about a week or so following 10/23, as she first discovered Annie Teller’s password, then used it to access other government websites. Over ten years, though, she’d remained there. She had few personal items to hold her to her own cubicle. Two, really: a camouflage fanny pack in which she packed her daily ration of snacks, and a pink sippy cup she favored for safety reasons. If she knocked it over, water wouldn’t damage Annie Teller’s computer.
Hoffmann’s cubicle walls had always been blank. Annie Teller’s cubicle was only a little better. Hoffmann paged through old human resources memos (she’d been surprised to learn that literally no one else in the building had kept these memos on file) and reread a missive entitled “Personalizing Your Workspace Within Acceptable Limits.” She used a color printer to print out the best emailed photos she could find of Annie Teller and Tawna Maydew—no photos of them together, naturally—and tacked them to the cubicle wall.
The rest of the computers died over time, likely from dust in their guts. Each monitor that went black felt symbolic, one more chunk of the world dropped off the grid. By 1,900–00:00, thanks to daily upkeep and periodic repair as detailed in owner’s manuals Hoffmann dug up in IT, only Annie Teller’s monitor still worked, the final fire of a prehistoric cave. The rest of the building’s framework endured, proving the U.S. government had, in this one way, prepared for apocalypse, Backup power kept electricity going, year after year, as well as the landlines.
Somewhere out there, perhaps, Annie Teller kept going too.
* * *
The Hoffmann Archive of Tales from the New World boasted (so far) 214 three-hole-punch binders, a gargantuan oral history of the decade after 10/23. It was a lot of paper, and office printers began to wheeze circa 1,650–00:00, after which Hoffmann used them in scheduled alternation. She discovered a vintage typewriter in a boss’s office, there for kitsch value, and was on the way to getting it back into working order. If she failed, she’d revert to handwriting. She’d always had nice handwriting.
That was how she had begun: her hands, a pencil, a sharpener, an eraser, a piece of paper. The earliest callers wanted guidelines for dealing with zombies. Hoffmann, who’d never encountered one, had little to give, but received enough reports to compile a workable profile of the plague. Infection set in when a living human’s bloodstream was introduced to zombie blood or saliva. There was no average time span between infection and transformation. Zombies had no trouble distinguishing between other zombies and the living. Zombies typically ate only 5 percent of a human body. Zombies never slept. Zombies seemed capable of holding grudges. Zombies exchanged information through grunts and possibly other ways no one could figure out. Zombies could be killed by brain trauma or incineration. She typed out the list and recited it when asked.
In Year Two, she learned how to jailbreak smartphones. A dozen had been left in the building, and she began using their voice memo apps to record Personal Histories. This facilitated far more accurate transcripts, which made her brim with satisfaction. What she did not like was her own voice. It bothered her, hearing herself ask the same questions over and over. Tell Me Where You Are, Tell Me How You Got There. Thinking of her stupid questions being read by future generations damaged her confidence.
She could not afford that. Therefore, she took to dropping her questions from Personal History transcripts, Really, they weren’t necessary. The responses said it all. All readers would ever read from her, the archivist, would be the letter Q. In this, she found relief. Q was an elegant letter. It looked good on the page. When she thought of how future Archive users would know her only by her Q, Q, Q, she nearly smiled.
When would the Archive be ready to be read by the likes of Snoop? All Hoffmann knew was not yet. She was not waiting for the zombie plague to end. She had no reason to believe it ever would. She suspected she was waiting for an inciting event, the most likely of which would be her own impending death. Were she taken by a mortal illness, she’d have a simple choice: open the AMLD doors or let it become a Tutankhamen tomb for future archaeologists.
Hoffmann had never cared for objects. Her apartment had looked like her workstation: bare walls, clear countertops. The Hoffmann Archive was the only physical thing she’d ever adored. She trailed her fingers along the binder spine
s and encouraged her mind to forget Snoop. Her thoughts tumbled, as they often did, through a decade of Personal Histories more unpredictable than any TV show she’d ever watched, including Lost.
The early years had surprised her with how many Personal Histories included monkey’s-paw lessons: be careful what you ask for. Now she took it as a given. Unlike Hoffmann, most humans lived in perpetual states of dissatisfaction, and regularly imperiled secure situations to acquire better things. A fancier car to navigate zombie-ridden off-roads. Clothing and hair products to maintain beauty standards that no longer mattered. Money—people, their brains running on habit the same as zombies, kept raiding vaults and getting cornered.
They told her all about it, seeking absolution that she, simple transcriber, could not offer. It was unfortunate how often the VSDC phone became a suicide hotline, given how poorly equipped Hoffmann was to offer comfort. In truth, she did not believe suicide was an invalid response. It made her think, yet again, of Haitian slaves, wretched from plantation work, anxious of losing their ti bon ange, fearful of never reaching lan guinée—suicide was their one way to control their fates. A man who called Hoffmann from Minnesota said he and others lived in a building so fortified they could live their whole lives in comfort, but he was going to shoot himself anyway, and not in the head, because at least zombies did something, at least zombies had desire and drive and wanted to keep going. Hoffmann was intrigued enough to create a new index entry, which she spent months retrofitting throughout the Archive:
Suicide
methods of
reasons for
as a means to becoming a zombie
She pondered this entry each time she edited the index. Etta Hoffmann could not stop comparing her hunger for stories to a zombie’s hunger for flesh. Stories kept her alive as much as canned beans and bottled water. Flipping through the Archive was like watching every TV show at once: situation comedies, wildlife programs, soap operas, detective series, hospital dramas, current-affair magazines, She’d known life’s essential truth back when all she did was log VSDC data; nowhere was there more life than in death. For ten years after 10/23, that thought kept her going. It kept her from considering becoming a page number next to Suicide.
The Living Dead Page 45