CHAPTER THIRTEEN
MY FEAR: WHAT if Isaac doesn’t grow?
My other fear: What if he does?
Logic said he would only decay, but logic had been thrown out the window, along with death, taxes, and the social contract. The Age of Reason was long over. Defying modern medicine, Isaac became massive in the womb. Against all likelihood, Annie escaped the dull fate of our brothers. We were in uncharted territory, and without certainties, without a map, I wasn’t sure how to proceed.
Sigh. I felt like a teenage goth mall rat stuck in a middle-aged zombie body. A survival plan was not going to emerge from the ether; no Hollywood hero was coming to save the day, no tablets from Mount Sinai to teach us how to behave.
I was a future ancient. A post-culture primitive. None of the zombie movies or the Max Brooks and Dr. Phil books could help me. La Chupacabra, Hook Man, the Man with the Golden Arm, Satan, Ed Gein, Dracula—they couldn’t help me.
We were alone. My barbaric yawp fell on deaf ears.
My greatest fear: The moral right is on the humans’ side. In the history books, assuming there’s a future, zombies will be portrayed as the enemy, the terrorists. The mujahideen and the Janjaweed.
But we only want to survive. We are only obeying our biological imperative.
On the second floor of Kapotas’s house, thumbtacked to the walls of his study, were postcards and letters from around the world, all of them thanking Kapotas for creating the chain-saw Garden of Eden. The sculptures touched us, the people wrote. They renewed our faith in Jesus Christ. Thank you, they scribbled, danke sch?n, gracias, for creating such an inspired masterpiece.
Those shortsighted fools. What good does it do now? What is the function of art in the apocalypse? Of religion?
Looking out the window, I watched Guts play with Isaac, trying to teach the zombaby how to run. So far Isaac hadn’t grown a whit and he was not a quick study. His chubby legs whirled in an imitation of Guts, his long spiked toenails clicking on the concrete, but when he fell down, he didn’t pick himself back up.
Leaves swirled around the two boys. Autumn in the Midwest. Unbroken by clouds, the sky was the color of a frozen corpse.
As soon as I could get everyone stitched up, trained, and stocked with essentials, we’d head for Chicago. Once we demonstrated our sentience to Stein and the other authorities, they’d grant us our civil rights, agree to a compromise. They’d have no choice; we’d eat them if they refused.
AT THIS POINT, get out of your chair, bed, or beanbag; if you’re outside, go inside; if you’re on the beach, insert your ear-buds and shuffle your iPod. Put on some inspiring music. The theme from Rocky would work, or some house or techno, anything with uplifting horns, a rousing beat, and no vocals.
What follows is a montage:
A maple leaf dropping from an almost bare tree. It catches in a wind eddy, circles in a vortex, then wafts to the ground.
Saint Joan fastening a metal plate to Ros’s head with screws and hinges; Ros knocking on it to demonstrate its durability.
Guts and Isaac running through the Garden of Eden, Isaac hiding behind the Ten Commandments. Guts finding him and picking him up, swinging our zomboy in a joyful circle.
Annie shooting her gun at a scarecrow—and hitting the head or the heart every time. Ros at her side, giving the thumbs-up, his metal head reflecting the sun.
All of us hunched over a human, tearing her limb from limb, then retreating to our separate corners to gnaw on the bones, savor the viscera.
Me sitting at a desk in Kapotas’s office, pen in hand, surrounded by reference books, composing the document that would save us.
Ros turning on the TV—nothing but static on every station.
Joan, Ros, Annie, and I ransacking the Kapotases’ closets and drawers for clothes; Annie trying on vintage 1970s hip-huggers, me a double-breasted suit too short in the sleeves and legs.
Joan and I removing Eve’s filthy maternity jumper and dressing her in a navy-blue velour sweat suit. It’s like dressing a baby.
Kapotas and Eve drooling, doing the zombie shuffle, walking into totem poles. Guts holding Isaac out for Eve and Eve marching right on by, not even seeing her son.
Pitch-black night, and Ros, Annie, and I lying on our backs with our heads touching, pointing at the constellations.
All of us gathered in the living room, sitting on the embroidered chairs and colonial couch, Ros standing in the center, talking and gesturing, telling the story of our future, our liberty and success.
Me fiddling with the radio. Over the montage music you can hear preachers shouting “rapture,” “end times,” “sinner,” and dragging the Lord’s name out to two syllables: law-word.
Pan out the window: The trees are bare, snow is falling. It’s winter.
IN HONOR OF the weather, Ros put on a Christmas album and he, Joan, and Annie danced to “Jingle Bell Rock.” Oh, what graceless zombies, dancing St. Vitus’s dance, delirium tremens, worse than Day of the Dead skeletons or tripping hippies.
I surveyed the troops from a rocking chair: Joan had cleaned her nurse’s uniform and was wearing it, although she’d discarded the stockings; her yellow legs were bare except for the suede patch at her knee, but she looked tough enough for the long march ahead.
Soldier-boy Ros was dressed for war with his combat boots, flak jacket, bulletproof vest, and metal head.
And Annie, cute as an undead button in her 1970s jeans and matching vest, her teenage body still nubile—she hadn’t been shot yet and had only been bitten three times—Annie was shaking her ass like there was no tomorrow. The pants sagged where the bottom half of her cheek should have been.
Guts whirled in like the Tasmanian Devil. He tossed Isaac on the couch and turned a cartwheel, raring to go.
If Chicago was a bust, if the meeting with Stein turned ugly and my treatise was dismissed, we would continue north. The best way to stave off decay is to stay dry. Ask any Egyptian mummy or frozen Neanderthal. Our choices were desert or tundra. Like Frankenstein’s creature, I chose the cold.
We could prolong our living death that way; we might even approach immortality. Assuming we survived the battle.
ONE LAST RADIO scan before we left: “Comfortably Numb” was still playing on DJ Smoke-a-J’s station. It’d been on repeat since he was eaten one windy fall day. His demise was broadcast live; we all gathered round the radio like they had in the 1940s, listening.
“They’re at the gates,” DJ Smoke had said. “The monsters are at the gates! I’m surrounded. Hello, is there anybody out there? Can anybody hear me? If you’re listening, if there are any humans left, I just wanna say…” He paused and took a shaky breath. “Aw, f*ck it. It’s for the best, actually. Humanity pretty much sucked, didn’t it? Yeah. War, greed, murder, genocide, rape, starvation, child molestation, envy, sloth…all those deadly sins from that Brad Pitt movie. Spoiler alert: That’s Gwyneth Paltrow’s head in the box! Hell, Hollywood’s tame compared to reality.
“I’ma go open the doors. Why not let the demons in? At least I know them—they’re my neighbors, my family, even my boss is out there. Like it or not, those zombies are us, our true selves. The veil has been stripped away and underneath we are cannibals. Fine Young Cannibals. I never liked that band.
“And those are my parting words in this life—an unsupported opinion of a band no one’s cared about since 1990. How banal and trivial. How fitting.
“Here goes nothing. Bye-bye, cruel world.”
“Comfortably Numb” came on, doomed to repeat for eternity—or until the signal is interrupted, whichever comes first. DJ Smoke left the mic on, and underneath the strains of Pink Floyd, we heard his screams, along with the slurps, rips, moans, and gurgles of a feed. It made us envious and greedy, gluttonous and lustful.
For brains. Whine it, scream it, say it with need, sarcasm, in a cuddly voice, in the voice of Vincent Price, the voice of Scooby-Doo—any way you slice it, any adverb you attach to it, it remains brains. The object of my desire.
Ros walked into the garage, singing: “There is no pain, you are a zombie. A distant ship, Smoke eaten by zombies.”
He was as tuneful as a corpse. I cocked an eyebrow at him.
“Ready to go, captain,” he croaked. “Nurse and Annie, check. Two little boys, check. Tweedledee and Tweedledum, secure, leashed, docile.”
Ros’s speech had improved in our time at the Garden of Eden. I still don’t know how he pushed air through his diaphragm, but then again I don’t know how I became a brain-crazed, constipated, self-aware zombie either.
We’ve all got our mysteries.
It’s the age-old philosophical question: Why zombies? Or, rather, why not not zombies? Why not nothingness? Why is there something instead of nothing?
I turned the dial. Squawks and screeches. I tuned in to the government station.
It was the same old speech we’d heard a million times: Arm your-selves, vigilantes, martial law, shoot ’em in the head and burn ’em. Another endless loop. Hamster wheels in hamster wheels.
Ros picked up the mic and spoke into it. “Attention,” he said. “I am a zombie. Who can talk. There is a group of us and we are heading for Chicago. Smart zombies, if you hear this, go north. We’ll find you. Over and out.”
He put down the mic. “Think that got out?” he asked.
I shrugged.
“Help some, maybe.”
According to Kapotas’s AAA maps, Chicago was a little over eighty miles to the east. There were six inches of snow on the ground and more coming down, but we’d make it. We left Paradise at nightfall, determined to gain our rightful place in the world.