CHAPTER FIFTEEN
OURS WERE THE only footprints on the snow-covered asphalt, and the trail we left behind was dragging and heavy as if we were skiing, not walking. We passed the subdivision’s sentries: two concrete lions atop two concrete pillars with the word KING’S etched in one and COURT in the other.
King’s Court was a typical housing development—all the trees had been razed to pour foundations and only a few homeowners had bothered to plant new ones. The houses were a combination of aluminum siding and brick, with a maximum of three floor plans to choose from. There were no sidewalks or corner stores, but there were basketball hoops in driveways, plastic play sets in backyards, and two-car garages. Inside the houses we found Berber and shag carpets, linoleum kitchens with faux-granite countertops, and more bathrooms than necessary.
We wandered up and down Bishop Lane and Queen Street, through Knight’s Crossing and Crown Drive, zombies on a giant chessboard of middle-class mediocrity. We ransacked the houses, hoping for a whiff of human or pet and searching for supplies.
In a two-story Tudor on Pawn Way, Joan found an all-terrain stroller for Isaac. It was one of those trendy carriages, a three-wheeler with a Gore-tex awning and shock absorbers. Designed for the active mother trying to lose that baby weight, it used to cost more than a beat-up station wagon. It was free now.
Guts lifted Isaac from his sled and strapped him into the stroller, fussing over the baby like a mother hen.
Although Isaac could walk, he preferred not to and I didn’t blame him. Like free will, walking is overrated. Plus, the tot wasn’t very good at it, wobbling around like a drunken devil, and we all enjoyed coddling and protecting him.
We believed Isaac was the future.
There was movement at the end of the cul-de-sac, a human scurrying from Rubbermaid trash can to Ford Focus like a wild animal. We picked up the scent, bite sites tingling, and convened in the middle of the street.
Everyone except Eve, that is. She took off after the creature, arms raised, helmet on sideways, the ear protector covering her left eye. Ros was right: Eve was a liability. Her presence did not contribute to our cause; in fact, she undermined our credibility. It was like allowing a convicted rapist to join NOW. I had to face the facts: She was incapable of learning. A mindless sheep.
We let Eve go on her stupid march. With hand gestures and nods we planned our own attack.
“Looks like a child,” Ros said. “Feral.”
Saint Joan nodded. Guts jumped up and down, clapping his hands and rubbing his duct-taped belly.
That Guts, the pixie, he was no longer black; he no longer bore the cross of his race. Annie, Ros, and Joan were no longer white, and neither was I. In zombiehood, race is erased. Brothers and sisters of the brain, we are gray, the ultimate race, a nation of nations. We are completely homogeneous. As a society we would be quite peaceful; all of the differences we used to fight over—religion, race, oil, the economy—are wiped out. We are a single unit, a focused target audience, a marketer’s dream.
If we were five zombies with consciousness, how many more of us existed? One out of every hundred? Out of a thousand? Ten thousand? How many in total? Enough for a revolution, that much I knew.
A gunshot rang out. We looked at Annie; her guns were holstered.
Eve was walking down the street like a crippled cowboy in a western. The Great Brain Robbery. A Fistful of Viscera. The Quick and the Undead. The Good, the Bad, and the Zombie. Another few paces and she might turn and shoot, spurs twinkling and jingling.
There was another shot, and this time I heard it ping Eve’s helmet. She continued walking, totally unaware.
“Stupid, stupid, stupid zombie,” Ros said.
We took cover in a garage. Next to a weed whacker was a pile of dog bones, matted fur still stuck to them. Ros picked up a rib—it had been a big dog, maybe a German shepherd judging from the hair—and gnawed on it. He handed Isaac a piece.
“Reverse situation here,” he said. “Me chewing on a dog bone. Like a dog. With his bone.” He crunched. “Crazy goddamn world.”
I bent down and put my arm around Guts. I poked his tummy, pointed at the wagon in the corner—a classic Red Flyer—then shook my finger, which flopped and wiggled, held on by nothing more than Krazy Glue, at Eve.
“Jesus,” Ros said. “Captain wants the kid to save her. Lovestruck fool.”
I shook my fist at Ros. He stuck his tongue out at me. It looked like sloughed snake skin.
Saint Joan tightened the helmet straps under Guts’s chin. The urchin looked like a Pound Puppy plushie; his eyes were milky and plastic, the lashes caked with dirt and soot in such a way that they separated, appearing lush and long, like Tammy Faye Bakker eyelashes.
I gave him a little push and he was off.
“Suicide mission,” Ros said once Guts was out of earshot, halfway down the street, running as fast as he could, the little red wagon wheels squeaking.
Eve didn’t even turn at the clatter. In her defense, she only had the one ear. Guts took bullets to his guts, his chest; nothing slowed him down. It was like the Iraq War footage we all saw on television before the zombie outbreak—the intrepid American soldier in the new urban battlefield, executing a daring guerrilla mission, dodging enemy fire, kicking down doors, searching for insurgents.
I suppose that war’s over. Guess what? Zombies won.
In no time Guts reached Eve and rammed the wagon into the backs of her knees, causing her to fall into it. He turned and trotted toward us, Eve spilling over the sides of the wagon, her feet and stump scraping the street. The shots stopped.
I imagined triumphant music. “Pomp and Circumstance” or something military. Guts made a victory fist and pumped it in the air. I reimagined the scene in slow motion.
To put the brains on the icing on the cake, the sniper made an error: He poked his head out the window of a three-story brick monstrosity.
We knew exactly where he was. Which house, which window. We knew his ball cap was green and he sported a full, dark beard. The man was trapped in a suburban nightmare. And this was no metaphorical trap like before the epidemic. As in: Oh! The tragedy of being owned by your possessions! Cry for me because I am rich yet my soul is poor! Please. This time it was literal. There was no exit.
Of course, everything is literal now. The metaphor is as dead as I am.
And I didn’t want to eat Green Cap Sniper. Allow me to rephrase that: I very much wanted to eat Green Cap Sniper. I was horny for his brains. If I was Zombie Verlaine, then he was Rimbaud.
But—and here’s the delicate turn, my narrative’s volta—he was worth more to us alive.
According to the history books, that’s what Che Guevara—revolutionary Christ figure, beret-wearing silkscreen on a thousand T-shirts—that’s what he told the CIA before they shot him, before they cut off his hands postmortem. Not that it mattered.
There’s nothing new under the sun.
I communicated my plan to the gang, pantomiming the attack on Green Cap, mimicking a feeding, then shaking my head no. Vehemently. Ros agreed.
“Muzzle her,” he said, jerking a thumb at Eve, who was still sprawled in the wagon, lowing in the alto range.
I got in the car and acted human. I adjusted my pretend ball cap and put my hands on the steering wheel at six and nine o’clock. Guts hopped in the passenger side. The keys were in the cup holder and I thought, What the heck, maybe we don’t need Green Cap. After all I’ve learned in my new incarnation, maybe I can drive. It was a Crown Victoria, an old person’s car, fully automatic, designed to float like a boat and guzzle gas as if the oil supply were endless.
I picked up the keys, located the right one, and tried to fit it in the slot. I jabbed at the ignition a few times, but the task seemed impossible, the level of coordination beyond me. I gave myself a pep talk: You can do it, professor!
Nothing happened. The keys fell out of my hands and slipped underneath the gas pedal. Guts and I just sat there in the garage like two kids playing Sunday Afternoon Drive.
The separation was complete: physical and spiritual; mind and body; thought and action. I was the living dead embodiment of Cartesian dualism: Though my soul was housed in my body, my body was divorced from my soul.
Ros pointed at me and squealed. The sound was otherworldly—a rabid pig with emphysema, a demon gloating over murders and wars, a cannibal with a baby at the end of his spear, Donald Sutherland in the final scene of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
Saint Joan covered her mouth with her hand, hiding her rotten teeth, putrid tongue, and obvious glee at my incompetence.
Humans call it laughing, but zombies don’t have a name for it. We don’t have a name for anything.
I got out of the car and held the door open for Ros. Let him try it, if he’s so smart.
Ros climbed in. And sat there. And continued to sit there. Impotent, like me.
“Can’t,” he gurgled.
As a human, I would have said something cutting to demonstrate my superiority. But I’m a compassionate zombie. My anger drained away and I was flooded with pity. Our poor dumb species. We’d never make it.
“Joan?” Ros said.
I looked at Joan and she shook her head, waving her hands in a gesture of adamant protest. I walked over to her, intending to escort her to the vehicle, when my shoulder began tingling, and everyone, Annie, Guts, Ros, Joan, even Eve, perked up, alert and poised. Stiff as lawn statuary.
Green Cap Sniper was approaching.
Eve headed straight for the brains, as steadfast as a pimp targeting a runaway. Guts sprang forward and closed the garage door in her face. Eve walked right into it, clawing at the barrier and moaning.
Part of me admired Eve. Her behavior was classic Romero zombie and there’s something to be said for tradition. Like a woman who stays home to raise the kids, she was old-school.
“Muzzle her,” Ros repeated, and I nodded.
Saint Joan grabbed the garden hose and tied Eve up. She removed Eve’s helmet and gave it to Annie. Guts took Isaac out of his stroller and they stood facing the garage door, holding hands.
“Lock and load,” Ros said, looking at Annie.
Corn-fed and flaxen-haired Ros’s dialogue was straight out of Die Hard with a Vengeance. I imagined he was that star quarterback in high school who got drunk on weekends and popped the head cheerleader’s cherry, the kid who sailed through algebra and Beowulf on his beefy good looks. After graduation, he joined the military to keep America free.
“Don’t eat the human,” Ros reminded everyone. We were standing in formation, lined up for battle. “Everyone ready?” he said. “Let’s roll.”
The only thing I rolled was my eyes. If all language is fossil poetry, as Emerson claimed, then Ros was burning fossil fuel faster than a jet engine. Rehashing tired movie clichés, not an original thought in his head.
Annie’s gun was drawn and cocked, her finger on the trigger. I nodded at Guts and he opened the garage door.
Green Cap was in the driveway, feet planted a foot apart, rifle drawn in a defensive posture. Isaac crawled toward his legs, but Guts grabbed the devil child by the seat of his onesie. Eve was writhing on the floor, the garden hose coiled around her like a snake. Saint Joan clutched her doctor’s bag and moaned, a plaintive wail filled with such longing I almost gave in to desire myself.
“What the f*ck,” Green Cap said.
Imagine you haven’t eaten in a week and your favorite dish—fried chicken or foie gras, beef Wellington or beef tacos—is in front of you. Or you’ve been crawling across the Sahara for three days, sun pouring down on your bald spot, sand in your teeth and eyes, and you can’t even sweat anymore, you’re that dry, and the lake in front of you is not a mirage but an oasis.
And you can’t eat or drink. Verboten.
“Brains,” Ros said. It was the truest thing anyone has ever said.
Green Cap sighted with his rifle but before he could squeeze the trigger, Annie shot it out of his hand.
“Jesus,” Green Cap said.
Here I am, I thought, resurrected and full of grace.
Green Cap took a step backward. It was fight-or-flight time, and it looked like he was going to fly.
Ros cleared his throat; it sounded like the glub of the Loch Ness Monster, a creature whose existence I’m currently rethinking. Because if zombies exist, why not Nessie?
“We come in peace,” Ros said.
Annie and Joan inched toward Green Cap, each step painfully slow, stroke victims learning to walk again. Annie brandished a rope, lasso-style. Guts tucked Isaac back into his pram.
“Holy Mother of God,” Green Cap said, and turned and ran. Guts followed suit, and the chase was on.
What a miracle Guts was. He dove for Green Cap’s feet and tackled him before they reached the cul-de-sac.
And poor Guts. Longing illuminated his urchin’s face, but he could only sit on top of the human until the rest of us reached them. No biting, no touching, like a lap dance.
Green Cap was thin; he probably hadn’t eaten a Hot Pocket in days. He looked like Paul Bunyan. His hair was long and matted underneath the John Deere cap and his beard was wild and woolly. He was wearing jeans, a flannel shirt, a down vest, and Timberland work boots. He was a survivor, all right. Who knew how many of us he’d fought off? Hundreds, at least.
He punched Guts in the face. He wrapped his hands around Guts’s neck and choked him, trying to poke his thumbs into our little guy’s eyes. Guts bared his teeth, snapping at Green Cap’s thumbs.
And one small bite is all it takes…
“Don’t do it,” Ros warned him.
“This can’t be happening,” Green Cap said. He let go of Guts’s neck and propped himself up on his elbows, ignoring the adorable zomboy perched on his chest. He watched us approach. By now, we were halfway down the driveway. “Are you all zombies?” he asked.
“We like brains,” Ros admitted.
“Is this really happening?” Green Cap asked.
“You better believe it,” Ros said.
“Why are you talking?” Green Cap asked.
“Why are you?”
Green Cap rested his head on the concrete. “Then it’s over,” he mumbled, “if they can think.”
Here’s my favorite recipe. Pretend you’re reading Like Water for Chocolate.
Ingredients: One human, warm and alive, preferably wriggling, maybe screaming.
Preparation: Using both hands, hold human firmly in place. Take a big bite. Chew. To enhance flavor, let pieces of flesh and viscera swing from mouth.
Repeat until human is a pile of bones.
But I couldn’t do it. It was triumph-of-the-will time. Mind over matter. Brain over brains.
I had a mantra and it was this: Do not eat the human…Do not eat the human…Do not eat the human…Do not eat…
Eve’s moans were at a fever pitch, loud enough to attract our brethren. She needed a sock in her maw. Pronto. I signaled as much to Joan, putting my hand over my mouth and nodding in Eve’s direction. The old gal did a 180, back to the garage, almost creaking as she turned. She was a dutiful zombie, a first-class minion.
We were almost to the end of the driveway. The Trail of a Thousand Zombie Tears.
“Brains,” Ros said. “Mmmmmmm.”
Ros’s arms were outstretched; he was slipping into character, losing cognition. I grabbed his elbow and shook him. Forcing him to face me, I made the peace sign, then pointed the two fingers to my eyes, then to his eyes, signaling: Look at me. Stay with me.
Do not eat the human…Do not eat the human…Do not eat the human…Do not eat…
Saint Joan muffled Eve’s moans. The suburb was quiet save for Green Cap’s sobbing. No snow shovels hit concrete; no children cried “Ollie ollie oxen free.” There were no dogs barking or screen doors slamming or cars revving. No middle-aged women power-walking or Mormons knocking on doors.
No one was left.
We reached Green Cap. Guts jumped off him and helped Annie hog-tie his ankles and wrists together.
“Why are you doing this?” Green Cap asked.
“You drive,” Ros said.
“You want me to be your chauffeur?”
We nodded.
“None of you can drive?” he asked.
“Too hard,” Ros said.
I took out my pad, wrote this down, and held it in front of Green Cap’s eyes:
Dear Sir,
Don’t be afraid. Although we covet your brains, we need you to drive us to Chicago. And please, call me Jack.
“Holy shit,” Green Cap said, looking up at me.
“Nice man,” Ros said. “He’ll drive.”
Green Cap wiggled on the driveway like a worm. Annie and Guts had done a fine job with the rope. “Don’t see that I have a choice,” he said. “How many like you are there?”
I shrugged my shoulders.
“We’re special,” Ros said.
I pointed at the note, like the ghost of Christmas future forcing Ebenezer Scrooge to look at his own grave.
“Okay, Jack,” Green Cap said. “You can call me Pete. I used to be an electrician but now I’m a survivor. A good one too. After the evacuation, I ruled all of King’s Court.” He lifted his chin as if to encompass the entire subdivision.
“Not anymore,” Ros said.
Up the street, a flash of color, along with a fresh tingling in my shoulder. The feral. I nodded at Annie and Guts and they took off, Guts running ahead, Annie lagging behind with the rifle over her shoulder.
Saint Joan came walking down the driveway, swinging her doctor’s bag and winking like a kind, matronly nurse in a World War I movie.
Compared to the Zombie Apocalypse, World War I was a walk in the park. Forget trench warfare and machine guns. Forget Woodrow Wilson and A Farewell to Arms. Hell, forget World War II and Hiroshima while you’re at it. Remove genocide and the postwar baby boom from your mind.
Now is the only thing that’s real.
“Leave Eve,” Ros said.
“Groooaaamph,” I said, meaning, “Perhaps.”
I wondered if humans still did it, the old in-out. And whether Pete was lonely in his barren subdivision. Were matters of the flesh and heart important to him? Were there Jews left in Israel?
Did the Holy Land ever even exist in the first place?
I wrote Pete another note: We need to find Howard Stein, creator of the virus. Is he still alive? Take us to him.
“Stein. Him,” Pete said. “Killed by a mob, apparently. Of humans, mind you, not the undead. This is word-of-mouth info—no more CNN—so I can’t vouch for the truth of it. But yeah. His own kind turned on him.”
“Go on,” Ros said, and coughed up some black goop.
“From what I heard,” Pete continued, glancing at Ros, “zombies controlled most of the city. A group of scientists and politicians were holed up in a building downtown and Stein was their leader, for a time. Guess he said that since he created them, he knew how to fight them. Food started running low, tempers high, and at some point they realized they weren’t holed up but trapped.”
“Stupid humans,” Ros said, shaking his head. “Typical.”
“Long story short, they decided Stein was the cause of their misery, so they took revenge. Can’t say I blame them. They threw him over the fire escape, right into the stenches below.”
Teeming masses. Quiet desperation.
“He didn’t even hit the ground, there were so many of them. Of you, I mean. Gobbled him right up. Apparently, there was nothing left.”
So Nietzsche was right: God is dead. And I had been looking forward to meeting my maker. He would have listened to me, understood my worth. I sat down in the driveway.
Ros must have seen the disappointment in my face. “We’ve still got each other, captain,” he said. “We’ll make it.”
I stood up, gathering myself for the troops. They were counting on me to lead them.
I wrote: Take us where we want to go. Or else!
Pete squeezed his eyes shut. A tear traveled down his cheek.
I nudged his head with my toe. His eyes opened; I bit the air and moaned. I was a fierce and hungry zombie. A fiend. Hear me roar!
“Kill me,” he said. “Just kill me already.”
“No way, José,” Ros said. “You drive.”
Pete sighed. “Fine,” he said. “Where to?”
Chicago, I wrote. I had to see it for myself.