CHAPTER ELEVEN
MY FATHER NEVER took me hunting. Dad and I read and discussed books together. We visited museums and cafés. He taught me how to swirl brandy and smoke a pipe. All the splendors of old Europe.
“The forest is a primeval place,” he said, “where ticks suck your blood, brambles scratch your legs, and rednecks lie in wait for people like you and me.”
“Like you and me?” I asked.
“Jews,” he said. “Intellectuals. And the blacks too. The rednecks are not fond of them either.”
As a child, I thought rednecks were creatures with bright red necks, like the tropical birds I saw at the Central Park Zoo. It was years before I realized they were just people, not monsters with bulbous necks hiding behind trees in woods.
Now I’m the monster, lying in wait for a fat red neck. Tables turned.
Guts and I trudged along the highway on our hunt. I put my hand on his helmet. He looked up at me and when I gazed at his undead visage, a surge of emotion swelled in my chest: his sunken and watery eyes, the blackened strip of his tongue, the chicken pox scabs pulsing greenly. I felt paternal and tender toward the tyke, maudlin even, and I understood the love my father held for me: unconditional and pure, selfless, and without a trace of irony.
It made me wish Lucy and I had created a child.
There was a rustling in the overgrown wildflowers in the median. We heard moans and chattering, giggles and nonsense. Two heads emerged from the tall grass.
Zombies Ros and Guil.
“Brains,” Ros said.
That voice! Musical, yes, and a miracle too, for it was a zombie talking. Talking! It was deep and guttural, Barry White singing in a tar pit, the devil speaking through Linda Blair in The Exorcist.
“Br…buh, buh, bray. Mmmmmm,” said Guil, and he sounded as primal as the rest of us.
The soldiers looked worse for the wear, but whose looks improve after death? Ros’s cranium was exposed, but besides that he was in one piece. Guil was in much worse shape; his head fell to the right, resting on his shoulder like a broken jack-in-the-box. The neck veins and muscles hung out like stuffing.
Clearly, they needed Joan—and Zombie Army needed them.
Ros pointed at me.
“You!” he wheezed.
Gadzooks! Not only did he talk but he had a memory to boot. Triple hallelujah!
“Bwaaaaahmmmnoh!” I shouted, and rushed to Ros. Arm extended, I stuck my finger in the top of his head, tickling the edges of the bite.
His eyes rolled back. He looked like Ray Liotta in Hannibal, the scene where Anthony Hopkins eats Liotta’s brains while Liotta is still alive. It’s both a lobotomy and a feast.
“Gooood,” Ros said. “Hmmmmm.”
With my other hand I touched Guil’s neck, where he’d been bit less than a month ago. The three of us stood there for a few minutes, locked in the zombie embrace, a mangled ménage a trois. Guts skipped around our legs like an oversized puppy.
A crow cawed high above us. Ros put his hand on my shoulder.
I pulled away and pointed at Ros and Guil, then at myself and Guts. I scissored my fingers, the sign for walking.
“Yaaa,” said Ros, nodding his head.
Martin Luther King he wasn’t. But at least he could articulate actual words. Coached by me, Cyrano de Bergerac–style, that might be enough. With practice, he’d improve.
I had a dream…or I would if zombies slept.
WITH THE ADDITION of Ros and Guil, we became a true hunting party—three men and a boy. And there was no better place to stalk humans than in their natural habitat.
The question was: Wal-Mart or the mall?
That’s the brilliance of Dawn of the Dead, the second movie in Romero’s trilogy. Set in a shopping center, the film exposes the rib cage of capitalism. Humans are safe within the confines of their shiny prison. They try on furs and fine jewels; they run through the stores, “shopping” with abandon. But it only lasts so long. Because the accumulation of material goods is a panacea, a substitute—it can never fill the void at our spiritual center. It can never acquire the depth of real meaning. It keeps us tethered to the material world, with zombies clawing at the double doors, greedy for more.
And zombies are never satisfied.
Neither are Winona Ryder, Donald Trump, or Jane Doe with her credit card debt of fifteen thousand bucks spent on manicures and pedicures and shoes she’ll never wear to glamorous parties she’ll only read about in Glamour magazine.
I’d rather crave brains than Gucci, Pucci, or Coach. There’s an innocence to brains; the desire is instinctual and primitive. Brains are necessary; we need them like sharks need surfers, like babies need mother’s milk. And like with babies, our wants are our needs.
Brains are truth. Truth brains. That is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
That’s Zombie John Keats, by the way. A pale flower, Keats died at twenty-six after a year of coughing up blood. The way I feel right now, I’d suck on his tubercular handkerchief. The blood of genius.
WE FOUND A Wal-Mart first. Of course. Discount scourge of the nation. It was off I-39 on a commercial strip with Mickey D’s, Subway, BK, DQ, KFC, all the acronyms. But there was no grease smell hanging thick in the air; there were no cars snaking through the drive-thrus. The sky was cloudless and Windex blue and it seemed like a late-summer’s day, although I can no longer gauge temperature accurately. In fact, I barely feel temperature. I exist; I am that I am. But for the warm tingle at my bite site and my hunger, I’d be as indifferent as a daisy.
A legless zombie was dragging herself down the yellow line in the middle of the road, her torso torn up like ground beef. Other zombies slipped in the trail she left behind.
Members of my tribe surrounded the Wal-Mart, pressing their foreheads against the barricaded automatic doors, leaving streaks of blood on the panes, trying to get to the humans inside. We could feel them in there, going about their business: eating kettle corn and tuna fish, riding bikes, trying on cheap lingerie, making desperate love in the dressing room, shooting guns at targets. And filling the toilets with their waste.
I’m glad zombies don’t shit. It gives us a superior moral edge. We don’t need Charmin or enemas. We’re beyond the body. Beyond good and evil, we use all that we consume; perfectly efficient machines, we absorb nourishment like tapeworms.
With the weight of all those ghouls, eventually the glass Wal-Mart doors would break and zombies would rush in.
I didn’t have that long, however; I had to get back to Eve.
The four of us skirted the perimeter of the parking lot and found the back entrance where the oil and lube center was located. There were no zombies back there—just Dumpsters, trucks, wooden pallets, and shopping carts. We waited for humans to come. And come they would, seeking refuge, adult diapers, and Cheez Doodles. Seeking community, lawn chairs, and Milky Way bars. Comfort, trash bags, and Goldfish crackers.
We hid behind a clump of decorative bushes at the edge of the lot. Guts was tending to Guil’s neck, wrapping it with what looked like poison ivy. I pointed at the two soldiers and made an inclusive circle with my arms, asking them to join Zombie Army.
“Ahhh,” said Ros. “You can…count…on me.”
I threw my fist in the air—power to the undead!—and heard a human squeal. A girl’s peal of laughter. My shoulder tingled. I put my finger to my lips and motioned for everyone to crouch down.
“Annabelle,” a man said, “be quiet.”
“And don’t run ahead,” a woman said.
“It’s okay, Grams. I can shoot a zombie a mile away.”
They were less than fifty yards from us, emerging from some trees to cross the parking lot. The girl—a teenager—sported long blond pigtails, a crossbow draped over her Strawberry Shortcake baby tee, and guns stuck in the waist of her low-rise jeans. The old couple clutched each other, their heads whipping from side to side. They appeared to be unarmed.
And oh! How thin the grandparents were! Emaciated as cancer patients. Shuffling on the asphalt in orthopedic shoes. The woman with long white hair coming out of her bun and an eggplant-colored polyester pantsuit; the man bald and bespectacled in a plaid shirt, cardigan, and jeans.
They were poster children for the old and fearful. A commercial for Celebrex.
They would be easy to overpower; the girl was another matter.
“I hope they let us in,” the woman said.
“Grandma, that’s like the fiftieth time you’ve said that in the last hour.”
“But what if they don’t hear us? What if there are zombies?”
“Grandma, there are zombies. That’s the way it is now. Like the Internet. Suddenly there it is and you’ve got to deal. Even if you are old.”
“Don’t talk to your grandmother that way, Annie.”
“The guy on the radio said this is the place and this is the way to get in. They’ll help us, you’ll see. It’s all good.”
Guts and I were restraining Ros and Guil, both of whom were ready to charge as soon as they caught a whiff of flesh. But without helmets, they risked getting shot in the head by pretty Annabelle. To communicate this idea, I made a gun with my hand and “shot” Guil with it, then shook my head no and knocked on my helmet. Ros nodded and gave me the thumbs-up. I put my arm around Guts and, through a complicated series of hand gestures and facial expressions, indicated that he and I would capture dinner while Ros and Guil stayed put. I thought they understood.
The best laid plans of zombies and men…
“Ohhh,” Ros said in his burbling rasp.
It was a loud trumpet. Annabelle snapped to attention.
“Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?” Grandpa said.
“Our hearing’s not what it used to be, dear. You know that.”
“You guys stay right here, okay? I’m gonna go check it out. Whatever you do, don’t move!”
Annabelle marched toward us. If Guts and I couldn’t control Ros and Guil, we were destined to be shot by a smart-mouthed teenager in combat boots and trendy clothes.
She could have been a student of mine, one of those postfeminists who eschew the label “feminist” although that’s exactly what they are. A lifetime ago, one such young lady had written a paper in my freshmen survey claiming that Spenser’s Faerie Queene was an allegory of cunnilingus. I’d given her an A, even though the course was contemporary American literature.
My shoulder felt like throbbing gristle—the meat by-product, not the industrial noise band.
It was Guts—our urchin, our orphan, our own li’l Webster—who came up with the plan.
His eyes met mine and he flicked them from Ros to Guil, then to Annabelle. His forehead crinkled significantly. He nodded his head at Grandma and Grandpa and smacked his lips—and I understood.
We let go of Ros and Guil at the same time, and the pair went straight for Annabelle.
“Watch out, dear!” cried Grandma and Grandpa.
Oh, poor zombies, trudging along at turtle speed. Annie had plenty of time to pull out her gun, take aim, and shoot Guil in the head. Kablam! Brains everywhere. I was glad it wasn’t Ros. We needed his voice.
Meanwhile, Guts darted out on all fours, quick as a ferret, and bit Annabelle on the ankle. She turned and fired as he scuttled, crab-like, to her grandparents, who were still clutching each other in the middle of the parking lot. The bullet glanced off his helmet. Annabelle grabbed her ankle; an egg-sized chunk of flesh was missing and she was bleeding a royal red. I emerged from the bushes, took out my pipe, and rubbed the bowl.
“You shot my friend,” Ros gurgled.
Annabelle looked up. “Dude, you can’t talk,” she said.
“Says who?” Ros said. Annabelle looked at me. I shrugged my shoulders and attempted a grin. A dollop of my cheek fell off at the dimple. Joan would have to repair that when we got back.
We must’ve been quite a sight for the girl. Me with my tweed jacket and pipe, Guts with his swift dexterity, and Ros with his exposed cranium and miraculous powers of speech. Her face went through a series of emotions: confusion, shock, disbelief, anger. It was like watching an actor practice her craft in workshop.
Finally, she hit determination, lifted her pistol, and aimed it, first at Ros, then at me. Cool as James Bond, I cocked my head, raised one eyebrow, and pointed behind her at Grandma and Grandpa.
“Brains,” Ros said. “Yum.” And strolled over to dinner.
The old lady was on the ground, Guts crawling on her like a fruit fly on a moldy peach. Grandpa had an arm around Guts’s waist, trying to pull him off. Guts sank his teeth into Grandma’s chest just as Grandpa pulled hard; the duct tape and embroidery thread gave way and Guts’s guts spilled onto Grandma’s stomach. Grandpa let go and gagged.
As for me, I was jonesing hard for some of that cannibal action.
“Hey, kid!” Annabelle yelled. “Get off her!”
She started to run to her grandparents, but her ankle gave out. Standing on one leg, she fired at Guts, hitting him in the back, but he was in la-la land, a feeding frenzy, the point of no return.
I wanted to bring Grandpa back to the Garden of Eden alive so that Joan, Eve, and Kapotas could have fresh meat, and I desperately hoped Annabelle would join the ranks of Zombie Army. That meant I had to be careful, play my cards right. Exercise restraint and NOT EAT EVERYONE IN SIGHT!
But a little snack first wouldn’t hurt anything.
I knelt down and took a bite out of Annabelle’s juicy teenage ass. Spitting out the acid-washed denim, I chewed on the fat. Bootylicious.
Annabelle swiveled her torso and butted me in the head with the handle of her pistol. It made a thudding sound on the army helmet. I took another bite and she hit me in the shoulder, the pistol connecting with my Jason-mask shoulder pad.
“Annabelle!” Grandpa yelled, and he turned and ran toward her. He only made it ten feet before he fell down hard, his face kissing the blacktop.
Great gobs of snot were bubbling out of Annabelle’s nose; her bottom was bleeding, but her ankle had already clotted and was turning a deep purplish brown. She turned her pistol around so that the business end was staring me in the face. I pointed at my eye, hugged my chest with my arms, and pointed at her—the universal sign for “I love you.”
“Well, I hate you, zombie scumbag,” she said, her finger on the trigger.
“Hey,” Ros yelled, looking up from Grandma, her blood smeared on his chin, “be nice, girlfriend!”
I inserted my finger in Annabelle’s gun, as if that could stop the bullet. If it didn’t work for the hippies at Kent State, it wouldn’t work for me.
Four dead in Ohio. Millions undead all over the place.
“What the f*ck is happening?” Annabelle asked. She was crying, hiccupping and barking like a baby seal.
I took out pen and paper and wrote this: If you can’t lick ’em, join ’em.
“I’d rather die than be one of you,” she said.
Too late, I wrote. Already infected.
Annie bent down and touched her ankle—the meat pulsated, almost glowed. She turned, ignoring me, and hobbled over to save Grandma, firing away willy-nilly. I admired her grit. She would make a first-rate soldier, even without cognition.
“Uhhhhhhh!” I yelled.
Grandma was lying open, bare, letting it all hang out. Ros and Guts were chowing down, but Guts looked up at the sound of my voice and in a flash our little trouper sprang forward and attacked, flying through the air like Wonder Dog and coming close to biting Annie’s tit off. A strip of her Strawberry Shortcake baby tee caught between his teeth and the two fell backward in an awkward cuddle.
Annie hit her head hard on the asphalt and was down for the count.
“One of us?” Ros asked, pointing at the girl, and I nodded.
Guts scrambled off of Annie’s chest and ran back to Grandma. He scooped up a handful of the old lady’s brains and presented them to me with an exaggerated bow. I stuffed my face with them.
“She’ll be sick soon,” Ros said, a piece of intestine hanging out of his mouth.
Annabelle turned green and vomited. I moved her head to the side so she wouldn’t choke and dragged her to the grass. She curled up like the sweetheart she was. Her ass had clotted just as it should. I stroked her golden pigtails, fighting the urge to bite her face off.
BY THE TIME we finished Grandma, good to the last scrap of rubbery aged meat, Grandpa had regained consciousness and Annabelle was morphing; she was sick and feverish, murmuring Dashboard Confessional lyrics and rolling her head from side to side.
Grandpa’s left side wasn’t functioning; apparently he’d had a stroke. Which was lucky for us—he was compliant and docile. We tied him up with Dumpstered twine and lined a Wal-Mart shopping cart with flattened cardboard boxes. We did the same for Annabelle and started back to the Garden of Eden with our groceries.
Cavemen returning home with a mastodon and a woman for the clan.
We had to protect our harvest. The living dead have a sixth sense when it comes to fresh meat and although Grandpa wasn’t exactly steak tartare, he was at least alive. Annabelle, on the other hand, was already unpalatable: She smelled like spoiled beans, rotten chicken, and that stuff the janitor sprinkles on puke in grade school.
The best plan was to avoid zombies altogether, which, once we reached the front of the superstore, proved impossible. The crowd of corpses pounding at the double doors moved in our direction, noses in the air like prairie dogs. My shoulder twitched, my bite site tingled, and the urge to join them seized me.
We zombies are a collective, a writhing mass: ants carrying pupae across a puddle, bees working a hive, a pack of wild dogs hunting, humans assembling cars in a factory. The impulse to lose one’s self in the swarm, to abandon individuality for group identity, is strong.
Flash mobs, soccer hooligans, Nazism.
The greatest good for the greatest number…
We couldn’t give in to it.
I grabbed Guts by the elbow and positioned his hands on Grandpa’s cart. I simulated running and pointed in the direction of the Garden, giving Guts an encouraging push on his back.
“Wait,” Ros said, and picked Guts’s guts off the ground, sticking them in the waistband of the young zombie’s pants. “Now,” he warbled. “Run!”
Guts looked up at me; his eyes widened and I again rejoiced. I loved looking in his eyes. They were yellow and full of pus, like all of us, but the light of understanding was in them. I knelt down and hugged him. His raw guts pressed against me. Never in life had I felt that way for a child. In fact, I’d never felt that way at all, not even for Lucy.
Cry your hearts out, ladies, and hand me the tissues while you’re at it. I’m watching Saving Private Ryan, Brian’s Song, Love Story, and Steel Magnolias with you. I’m saying good-bye to cynicism and ironic detachment and hello to love. Because this is important. This is a matter of life and death.
Or what passes for life and death in postapocalyptic America.
Of course, the apocalypse label adds weight to everything.
Guts watched the approaching horde with longing, but like the good zombie he was, he set his narrow shoulders, thrust out his scabbed jaw, and took off running with our dinner.
“Good kid,” Ros gurgled. “Make it?”
I shrugged. Guts turned onto the frontage road and ran down the alley behind Best Buy and Old Navy. He looked small and alone, like a homeless street kid pushing a shopping cart full of marbleized meat, clogged arteries, a worn liver, two shrinking kidneys, and one glorious brain.
I didn’t know who to pray to for his safety. Nobody was watching us; everything was permitted. So I prayed to the only god I could count on:
Oh, Jack Barnes, who art myself, please allow Guts safe passage to the Garden of Eden with our meat alive and intact. This is a world without end. Amen.
ROS AND I took turns pushing the feverish Annabelle up I-39. We saw no humans along the way and the zombies left us alone. They were as clueless as chickens, stumbling pea-brained through cornfields, hay bales, and fences. One zombie walked into a tree and became stuck with his face pressed against the bark, unable to negotiate the obstacle, like a wind-up toy against a wall.
The undead don’t avoid bodies of water like the living do. We walk right in, navigating the bottom like catfish, shuffling over the sand and rocks and getting snagged on broken bottles and lost lures. I watched one enter a stock pond, disappear, then reemerge on the opposite bank like the Creature from the Black Lagoon. As miraculous as Chauncey Gardiner.
I felt the urge to preach: “Stop your wandering, my zombie children, and follow me to the Promised Land. The second coming has arrived. The Undead Diaspora is reunited and your suffering has not been in vain. Join us! Together we will meet our maker and fight for a homeland.”
“Waaaaaah,” is what I said. And they ignored me.
I prayed Saint Joan would save a few pieces of Grandpa for me and Ros. Like Napoleon, I knew that an army marches on its stomach.
If Jesus fed the five thousand with two lousy fish, why couldn’t I do the same with one old man?
The truth is, people long for miracles. They want to believe.
“Brains,” Ros mumbled. “I like brains.” He reached down and petted Annabelle. “One of us,” he said. “Soon.”
“Worms in my mouth,” Annabelle said, slapping at Ros’s hand. “Two tons of concrete. Billy, get off me!”
We approached a billboard advertising the Garden of Eden. Take the next exit, the sign said, and turn right. Paradise is one mile down the road, behind the BP. At our pitifully slow pace, it could take us several hours, but I wasn’t tired, not in the least. Although we are incapable of rapid locomotion, the walking dead don’t need to rest. We can shuffle along forever, circling the globe a hundred times, under oceans, over tundra, crossing deserts.
Except for Guts. He could run. And I can write; Joan could heal and Ros could talk. Blessed are we, the new race, each of us granted one amazing ability. Separately, we are incomplete. Working together, we form a whole.
To paraphrase the Bible, the Gospel according to John: A living grain of wheat remains alone, a single seed; but when it falls into the earth and dies, it bears much fruit.
I looked at Annabelle, who was delirious with fever, covered with vomit, and all-around sick as shit. Ros was pushing her cart, humming the theme song from Batman. I prayed Annabelle would be reborn as a Super Friend, with a superpower like us. Another mutant, another adaptation. The X-Men, Magneto and Wolverine. Masters of the Universe and the Powerpuff Girls. Spider-Man, Plastic Man, and Baby Plas. The Green Lantern. O mighty Isis!
Odds were against her—they were against all of us—but I had faith. And if faith can move mountains, then keeping Annie smart would be a piece of cake.
We slogged on down the highway; I thought of Joseph Campbell’s The Power of Myth and I was comforted. I know heroes exist because I am one. Destiny, fate, Power Rangers, gods, they all exist.
Zombie John Keats called the physical world the valley of soul-making, and I finally understood what he meant. Because I was walking through that valley. I felt it in my brain stem, my cortex, my goddamn pineal gland. He meant transcendence; he meant immortality.
I believe in you, my soul. Through my earthly trials I am creating you.
Holy blade of grass, Batman! Holy plateful of guts.