The Living Dead

by Kraus, Daniel

  “I love—you guys. I—really fucking—love you—guys—love you—Luis—love you—”

  “Snoop,” Hoffmann said, and when she took hold of Charlie Rutkowski with not just one hand, but both, it felt like the embrace they’d been owed since their first phone call a million years before.

  “Haunt—them, Poet—like—you’re—already—”

  Eviction

  “Let’s tell the truth. Can we agree, Karl, to do that much? The truth is we shouldn’t be up here. We shouldn’t. We might have our differences, but when it boils down, we should all be on the same side. What side is that? That’s easy. We should all be on the side of the living. But that’s not what I see. Maybe it took a fresh pair of eyes to see it? What I see is your Council doing an excellent job. A fantastic job. An excellent, fantastic job protecting zombies.”

  “I didn’t come up here to debate you. I came up here to remind all of you, my friends, that we built Old Muddy as we did because we didn’t believe in sides. Zombies are not what brought us to this point in history. It was sides, the long history of taking sides.”

  “Sides, a bad thing? This is what I can’t understand. Sides are what keep psychopaths away from children. Not having sides at all, that sounds like a dictatorship to me.”

  “I don’t know how you get from a council to a dictatorship. We are empathetic people. That’s all we have ever tried to be.”

  “We are this, we are that. You’re going to speak for all of them.”

  “That is exactly what I am not doing.”

  “Frankly, I’m surprised more of your ‘empathetic people’ haven’t killed themselves. It’s an awful thing to say, I know. But you kill yourself around here and you’ve got it made. Few blocks north, there’s a whole neighborhood waiting for you, rent-free. Once that’s not good enough, we’ve got cozy beds for you right across the street. It’s a tempting offer. Maybe the reason more people don’t take you up on it is all their suicide weapons are all bricked up. It’s an awful thing to say. I know.”

  “No one here does anything they don’t want to do. Except wash their hands.”

  “That’s what people in cults say. ‘Everyone’s free to do what they want.’ But they’re really not, are they? Because they’re being manipulated. All you people, take a look at yourselves. How you dress, the kind of food you eat, where you sleep. Is it how you’d be living if you were making your own choices? Of course not. Because there’s a council saying, you have to put whatever you find, no matter how hard it was to find, in the communal pot, so someone who didn’t work at all can have it.”

  “I don’t know why this is so difficult for you to understand. The Council doesn’t set rules. They carry through ideas we decide upon.”

  “There’s Karl’s ‘we’ again. Hear that, people? ‘We’ is the chain gang of words, my pop used to say. ‘We’ is everyone tied ankle to ankle—of course we’re going to move slowly, chained together! We need more ‘I’ around here! Who’s with me on that?”

  “I am. We all are. That’s why the Custodial Council rotates. Every voice has equal weight. You’ve been here four months, Richard. Your time on the Council will come up soon, and you’ll see for yourself it’s a job of responsibility, not power.”

  “Responsibility, not power.”

  “If you’re clear on it, we can climb down and go about our evening.”

  “I see why they hired you, Karl.”

  “No one ‘hired’ me.”

  “I see why they hired you because you make my case so elegantly. If you’re a person with responsibility, but no power, what are you? I’m asking you, what are you?”

  “A valued citizen doing your part.”

  “You’re an employee, baby. You guys remember McDonald’s? Wendy’s? Burger King? You think those minimum-wagers weren’t popping their zits all over your Big Macs? You pay people squat, you get squat. That’s what tomorrow’s vote is all about. I say we scrub the Council, where good ideas die deaths longer and slower than zombies.”

  “And replace it with what? A leader, I suppose? Someone like you?”

  “I didn’t say that. I’m not advocating for or against that.”

  “Let me tell you who never had a leader. The zombies—and they took over the whole world. What other proof do we need that a united purpose is the most powerful force there is?”

  “I get a little offended when I get compared to a zombie. Maybe it’s just me.”

  “Here’s the problem with leaders, Richard. When you poke a hole in a community and say, ‘Here’s the leader, this spot right here,’ all the water drains into that hole. No one does anything for the right reasons ever again, because they need that water to survive. I spent two decades in the U.S. Navy. That was how we operated. Because the world was already ruined, and the best we could do was dress up in matching outfits and point weapons at each other.”

  “We would have fared better against zombies without guns? You’re actually saying that?”

  “I’m saying it wouldn’t have mattered. Any way you game it, we end up right here, right back at ‘in the beginning.’ But that’s an opportunity. That’s the rarest chance a species ever gets. We were given a chance to start over here at Fort York. By this beautiful lake. With the means to grow this beautiful garden. You know what? I’m happy I’m up here speaking about this. Because I don’t get to say it enough: I’m proud of you. I’m proud of all of us.”

  “Karl’s getting in the mood! All right, Karl, if you’re so happy and proud, let’s talk about Fort York. Let’s talk about what you built here.”

  “Happy to.”

  “You’ve been here five years? And there’s still no defenses?”

  “All the colonies we’ve been in touch with are peaceful.”

  “For now. For now they’re peaceful.”

  “They’re striving for the same things we are.”

  “That’s right. They are. They literally are. I call them the Beachcombers. They land on our beaches at night, we’ve all seen them, little boats at night with two or three people. I don’t know what so-called peaceful community they’re coming from. Fort Drum? I don’t care. They come to Toronto to take our stuff.”

  “How is everything in Toronto ours?”

  “Because we were here first, baby.”

  “Were we? Who gets to say who owns what?”

  “These fine people standing here in the cold get to say! Because they’ve put in 100 percent of the work around here, Saint Karl. They call you Saint Karl, don’t they?”

  “Some do. I wonder what they call you.”

  “My bet is no one’s going to be calling you Saint Karl once people start dying. Once a lot of people start dying. No place I’ve been, and I’ve been everyplace, has had the hubris to not have even the flimsiest defensive wall. You don’t think some of those Beachcombers aren’t going to want what we have here? The guns in the Armory? The food poor Shyman and Sung-Yung were guarding?”

  “Shyam and Yong-Sun.”

  “Neither of whom will ever be the same again! You need a wall, for starters, which I will help build after we get rid of the Council who says we can’t build it! No one gets in without proving their worth first. The days when someone could just waltz in are through.”

  “Isn’t that how you got here? Just waltzing in?”

  “I’m not talking about the past, Karl, I’m talking about the future.”

  “Everything you say is about the past.”

  “If that were true, you think I’d have a crowd like this? No more freeloaders. No chance of zombies getting in either, unless we’re the ones shipping them.”

  “Shipping them? What does that mean?”

  “We find the right partner out there, who knows? Zombies are a good source of labor if we can find a fresh-enough crop.”

  “Richard. You don’t trade people.”

  “Don’t act so shocked. What’s shocking is you tucking them into little beds across the street. If you won’t give us our guns to shoot the
m with, and you won’t let us build a wall to keep them out, we might as well get something out of them, am I right? Jesus Herschel Christ, we give those deadheads everything, and what do they do for us? They’re leeches. They’re worse than food-stampers. They’re an invasive species, that’s what they are. Asian carp. Burmese pythons.”

  “They do share one thing with most invasive species: we brought them here. It’s our fault.”

  “Well, if we brought them here, it’s our right to get rid of them! After we win tomorrow, folks, we’re going to tear down the Armory. You hear that reaction, Saint Karl? The people speak!”

  “They speak because they’re not remembering. Friends, come on! We don’t eat meat. We don’t need guns for hunting. The zombies who are left, you’ve seen them, you’ve all done recovery jobs in Slowtown. They’re no kind of threat.”

  “‘All these streets are yours except Slowtown.’ Nice catchphrase, Saint Karl. But what kind of sense does it make to give zombies a major street running straight through the area we ought to be developing? If we don’t claim it, the Beachcombers will. We could gun up right here, right now, head over there—bang, bang, bang—circle back through Hospice—bang, bang—and have our hands clean of the whole mess by breakfast. By breakfast, baby! Ladies and gentlemen, after fifteen years, the odds are in our favor! And we’re just standing here. Building clocks. Inventing better soap.”

  “We cannot build a better world on violent acts.”

  “When was the last time you people left the city? If it ever warms up, I’ll tell you what, I’ll head up an excursion. You won’t believe your eyes. Millions of acres, untouched, and the only things standing in our way are a few little tribes of zombies.”

  “Enough. We’re done. I’m not going to try to reason with a man—”

  “In the old days, a place like Slowtown, the poor or the sick? Eviction.”

  “Excuse me—”

  “Zombies, unfortunately, don’t mind being poor or sick. They require a firmer hand.”

  “—excuse me, this is our way of life. To stand up here, after four months—four months of doing nothing remotely productive, I might add—and think you have the first idea what makes this place work? This is our home, Richard. It works. We know it works because we know how it makes us feel every day. If you want to go back to the old ways of blowing things up and shooting people, I suggest you look behind you. See that building? Just across the bridge, still standing? That’s the New Library. I suggest you go in there, pick up a few books, and reacquaint yourself with the old world you’re so attached to. See how close we came to ending it all, before the zombies.”

  “I’ve been to your library. I sat for an interview with your librarian. Jesus Heinrich Christ, she’s a piece of work, isn’t she? I have a humble suggestion about what to do with her beloved Archive. You want to hear it, folks? It sounds like they want to hear it, Karl.”

  “Friends, ask yourselves why this man appeals to you.”

  “Burn it, baby. Every single binder. Soak them with gasoline and burn them.”

  “We can’t listen to this. We have to be good to one another.”

  “We don’t have to do anything. This isn’t your ship anymore, Captain.”

  “It’s…”

  “Ah, the big talker has run out of—oh. Is there news? It looks like news.”

  “People, whatever it is, let’s not—”

  “Lots of whispering going on. Who wants to let us in on it?”

  “We shouldn’t rush to—”

  “Is this right? Am I hearing this right?”

  “It’s not what it … People, please.”

  “Karl? Saint Karl? Is there something you want to tell us?”

  “People. Please. Yes, it’s true. There was an incident.”

  “This is unbelievable. They’re telling me—”

  “An accident. A terrible accident.”

  “Charlie Rutkowski is dead. Folks, she’s dead.”

  “This isn’t—we were going to tell everyone tomorrow.”

  “After the vote, you mean. Oh, Karl.”

  “Because it’s late, that’s all.”

  “This happened in Slowtown?”

  “On a recovery mission. But—”

  “On one of those ‘safe’ recovery missions in Slowtown?”

  “I know how it sounds. But none of this changes anything we’ve—”

  “I’m hearing she was bit by the Chief? That’s the old zombie everyone claims is so peaceful!”

  “Accidents like this have always happened. There has always been a risk.”

  “How is blowing the Chief’s head off an accident?”

  “I…”

  “That’s what I’m getting from the front row, Karl. Did you use a gun, an actual gun, to shoot that zombie in the face?”

  “I’m not going to let you twist this.”

  “The guy who took our guns shot the Chief—with one of our guns?”

  “You all know how important Charlie was to me. How important she was to all of us. It was a moment of poor judgment.”

  “I think you did the right thing, Karl.”

  “No, I didn’t. I did not.”

  “Of course he shot that nasty old woman in the face! Poor, sweet Charlie—”

  “Don’t you dare use her name—”

  “Karl said when he came up here we had nothing to argue about. I’m man enough to say he was right. He’s taken action today in Slowtown that every single one of us should follow. Yes, that’s right. Go ahead and cheer. We should all cheer at what Karl did! How about we don’t stop yelling hooray until we’ve finished the job? You want to wait until tomorrow to do it? No? Me neither, baby. Who wants to act right now? Who wants to see justice, Karl’s kind of justice, laid out right this second?”

  Faster, Brighter, Deeper

  Electric tongue tip to tongue tip, a million nerves snapping, la petite mort, the little death, the flash blackout of orgasm, the body seized in pleasure so arresting it might as well be pain, and gratitude too, for at last your body ceases to exist in the troublesome way it always has, and your mind, just as troublesome, also ceases but to acknowledge it’s all gone, the fear, anger, sadness, disgust, shame, dejection, indignation, envy, contempt, helplessness, despair, suffering, guilt, pulled from your body the way a titan’s fist might extract your spinal cord, leaving you deboned and featherweight, a slip of flesh, a mere notion of a woman, and unclear if woman was a good idea at all, if man was either, here in the ether, they both seem so clunky, those beefy stacks of flesh with their pulsing organs and leaking orifices and the raw, wet, spilling disgust of their reproduction, more pleasure, more pain, la petite mort all over, except these little deaths make a life, a squealing piggy of hot, angry flesh to suckle and nourish only so it can wreak its own trail of joy and misery, the point of which seems clear now, the point being there was no point, but the universe is a big place, so what does it hurt to gamble on one world and see if its ants build anything but hills, see if its bees serve anything but queens, see if the species on top does anything but subjugate and terrorize every other tier, only for the dice to come up mixed, of course they do, it’s always been a cold table, and you’re busted, ass on the curb, body broken, heart and lungs kaput, and you are here, wondering why you ever bothered in the first place, for it’s so much better here, effervescent in electric eclipse, which you might have guessed would be lonely but is not, where you have taken the hand offered in what you used to believe were nightmares—Shall we dance?—and discovered there is no learning curve here, you are not born into it a squealing piggy but instead drafted to the highest level, all knowledge yours, because this is life and death at once, and what a surprise to learn the two states never had to be divided, and you understand what happened down there on the blue rock you used to crawl around was nothing less than this perfect form visiting Earth, the zombies, life and death, each powered by an all-consuming singularity of la petit mort, where the You and You and You was just another
way of saying Us, and now you, former woman, have been invited into that effort, and you are happy and grateful, until the touching tongue tips slip, and something goes very wrong, or possibly very right, and the formless idea of you curdles back into physical form, just look, your chest, your belly, your arms, your hips, your legs, your feet, we shall not dance, not just yet, and you are upset, and a single sob from you could shatter the blue rock into pebbles, but you accept the relapse, as those you briefly became have given you the gift of a lesson, one you first saw on a plaque above the door of your old boss and former lover, HIC LOCUS EST UBI MORS GAUDET SUCCURRERE VITAE or THIS IS THE PLACE WHERE DEATH REJOICES TO HELP THOSE WHO LIVE, and that’s here, that’s now, they have rejoiced to help, and now you must live, toward the promise that, if we work as one, the secrets of our gorgeous, messy, thrilling world can be ours, and you, woman, will be the one to tell them, if you can only remember it when you wake. We could have it all.

  Charlie Rutkowski didn’t die.

  She tasted something. Like dirt and kerosene, a little floral, slightly sweet. Next, she smelled it, a lardy, oily odor. Finally, she felt it, a kidnapper’s hand clasped over her mouth, his fingers digging into her cheeks. She rolled her jaws and felt the grip extended all the way to the back of her skull. She stuck out her tongue and explored small holes drilled into hide. It was leather over her mouth. Through the jailhouse bars of her crusted eyelashes, she saw the buckles pinning her wrists and ankles. Everything was soft and fuzzy until she felt the cold iron poke of a blunt object to her right temple.

  The bolt gun. She’d pressed it to dozens of temples herself. She was in the Dying Room. She’d been dying. Now here, so fast, came another death.

  “Stop!”

  A twisting body—Etta Hoffmann—landed hard atop her. Charlie felt all breath shoot out of both their bodies. Never in her life, she felt certain, had the stiff librarian moved with such spontaneity; it was a wonder her tendons didn’t audibly snap. Yet there Hoffmann was, flopped over the dentist’s chair, heedless of the potential contagion of Charlie’s saliva. Her left hand slapped so hard at the bolt gun she boxed Charlie’s ear three times, more than enough to yank her from the bog of willow bark, menthol, and chili pepper.