CHAPTER FIVE
WE REDUCED LOVER to his essence, a pile of bones and puddles of blood, then I struggled into the El Dorado. In spite of all I knew about zombies—the myths and realities, our limitations—it struck me that I might be able to drive to Chicago. If any cadaver could do it, I could.
The keys were lying on top of the dashboard, the gas tank was full, but I just sat there staring at the speedometer like a crash-test dummy. Behind the wheel, I was incompetent, as confused as an Alzheimer’s patient puzzling over how to make a ham sandwich.
Disappointed, I got out of the car, and Eve and I shuffled to I-80 on foot. Soon enough we found ourselves in the middle of a herd of five hundred moaning, groaning corpses. A band of zombies is louder than you think. We gurgle, like giant rotting babies. An occasional limb hit the ground with a dull thud but everyone just shambled right over it. Zombies with broken backs dragged themselves across the blacktop, leaving trails of spinal fluid. The runts of the litter, those crips are lucky if they get to suck the bones of a kill.
I-80 was a junkyard. Vehicles with open doors and steaming engines. Bloody piles of clothes. The odd washing machine or Big Wheel. A stuffed Pink Panther. A desktop. A coffeepot. A dirty diaper. An algebra textbook and a Game Boy. The remains of Western civilization. No cars passed us for an eternity. Eve walked in circles, bumping into other zombies. No one said excuse me.
As a human, I hadn’t cultivated any sort of group affiliation or identification. In fact, I’d carefully avoided it. Being a lone wolf and an observer, an outsider with a melancholic disposition, suited my ideology and career. As an academic and cultural critic, I interpreted popular phenomena like NASCAR or reality television, but I certainly didn’t consider myself a fan.
That’s why my feelings surprised me: I felt a kinship with the creatures as we ambled down the road. I had sympathy for their hunger, compassion for their unquenchable thirst, sorrow when I looked at their maimed corpses. And I was worried about the future. Our collective ontology concerned me.
I practiced speaking as we walked, but I must have coughed up my vocal cords, if that’s possible, and my tongue was a black and useless thing, a limp and charred sausage.
How could I discuss our survival with Stein if I couldn’t even say goo-goo-ga-ga? For all I knew, Stein had become a zombie too. Just a slob like one of us. Crying for brains and covered with wounds that don’t heal or weep.
“Eeeeeee,” I said. Vowel sounds I could handle; consonants made me gnash my teeth.
The ground rumbled and shook. I pulled on the rope and brought Eve to me, inserting the tip of my finger into her wrist, which seemed to calm her. The unmistakable whir of a chopper filled the air.
Behind us, a military convoy crested the horizon. The American flag flew on the first tank, Old Glory waving in the wind.
This was why Eisenhower built these highways in the first place: to mobilize the military and evacuate citizens during an atomic attack. Black asphalt crisscrossing the contiguous forty-eight like bondage gear.
Never mind that most Americans took the highways to visit Disney World or dying grandmothers, not escape giant mushroom clouds and Russians. The roads brought us purple dinosaurs and snake farms. All-night diners and oil refineries. Buicks and monster trucks. The world’s largest ball of twine. Cold War dreams turned millennial nightmare.
Better dead than red.
But better undead than dead.
Over fifty years after its construction, the System of Interstate and Defense Highways had finally fulfilled its original function. Mission accomplished.
Zombie Ike must be proud.
The tanks were accompanied by foot soldiers equipped with hand grenades, rocket launchers, submachine guns, pistols, flamethrowers, MREs, cigarettes, porn. And sharpshooters who went for the head.
Civilization hadn’t completely broken down yet if the military was killing to the tune of “Walk This Way”—the Run-DMC version.
Doesn’t anyone slaughter to “Ride of the Valkyries” anymore?
The soldiers opened fire. They were marching in unison, to the beat. They were, in fact, walking “this way,” if “this way” meant the wholesale and rhythmic massacre of innocent American zombies.
I crooked my finger deeper inside Eve’s wrist, hooked it around a bone, and pulled her closer. The other zombies were walking directly into the bullets. They simply couldn’t comprehend the danger—they looked at the soldiers and saw only breakfast, dinner, a light snack.
My tribe is a stupid tribe, and that’s precisely why I wanted to save them. To teach and lead them. But I couldn’t do it if they wouldn’t let me. It’s like convincing your alcoholic girlfriend not to drink: It ain’t gonna happen. Booze or brains, it’s all the same. The addict has to want to change.
A nearby zombie’s head exploded and a piece of his brains splattered on my glasses. His teeth flew out of his mouth and chattered down the highway. Eve took a hit to her swanlike neck, the chunk of flesh whizzing behind us so fast it whistled. My bride was falling to pieces under my care. I tugged hard on her rope and we took cover behind a Toyota Tercel.
THE CONVOY WAS easily a mile long, the middle guard a ragtag battalion of soldiers and civilians, Hondas and Beetles, motorcycles and skateboards. A young mother carried her baby in one arm and a machine gun in the other; a blond moppet of a boy skipped hand-in-hand with a cornrowed African-American girl, both throwing grenades into the zombie multitude. Humanity was finally united against a common enemy: us. Me.
This was genocide in front of my eyes and I couldn’t stop it; my people were being extinguished like all the powerless masses of the world. Oppressed, dispossessed, hated. History teaches us that humans kill what they fear.
“Immigrant Song” came on at a lower volume than the Run-DMC, and the convoy stopped. In front of us was a giant cage on wheels, like the lion’s cage at the circus, only bigger and pulled by a Hummer. There were zombies trapped inside, dozens of them at least, bumping into each other and clamoring at the bars. A small troop of battle-dressed soldiers walked alongside the corral, two of them on the side facing the Tercel.
I named them Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
Here was the greatest tragedy of the twenty-first century. A viral outbreak and the military’s bumbling response. Something was rotten in the state of Iowa. Or were we already in Illinois?
And was Britney Spears a zombie? Was the Dalai Lama?
The hammer of the gods.
Next to me, Eve thrashed around, foaming with desire. It was all I could do to keep her tethered; it was all I could do to keep from joining her in mad brain-lust.
Because just one bullet to the head and Jack Barnes would be dead.
“Don’t even think about it,” Rosencrantz (hereafter Ros) yelled as he rifle-butted a zombie poking his head through the bars.
“God, it stinks in there,” Guildenstern (hereafter Guil) said.
“F*ckin’ stenches,” Ros said, and stumbled forward, moaning and pretending to bite Guil’s shoulder.
“Cut it out, dude. You could get yourself killed.”
“No one would take me for one of them,” Ros said, and stood at attention, drawing himself up to his full six feet and squaring his shoulders.
“I meant by one of them, not us.”
“Any soldier who can’t successfully combat a zombie is a retard and deserves to be eaten.”
Oh, how I wished I could bound forward like Bruce Willis, utter a snazzy one-liner, and devour the cocky bastard. Clearly that hubristic line signaled his demise. Anyone familiar with the grammar of film—not to mention Greek and Elizabethan tragedies—knows that.
Unfortunately Rosencrantz was right: I couldn’t fight him with my restricted motor skills. And that depressed me. The military ranked lower than absurdists and Everybody Loves Raymond fans in my personal hierarchy of intelligence.
“Maybe,” Guil warned, “but don’t let your guard down. Always be alert and above all else, be prepared.”
“What is this, the Boy Scouts? These corpses are slower than your grandma and mine put together. Bottom line: The war is over and the good guys won. Disaster, world takeover, zombie apocalypse averted.”
Eve leapt, exhibiting a strength and agility far beyond what a pregnant zombie should possess. She dragged me around the Tercel and toward the soldiers. I tried to hold her back, hooking my foot on the bumper of the car, but the rope connecting us began to cut through my khakis and sink into my flesh. It could have slashed me in half—I was that decayed and soft—and then I’d be one of those pathetic crip zombies, dragging my torso around while my detached legs walked in aimless, undead circles.
Guil lifted his gun to his shoulder. “Die, zombie bitch!” he yelled, his finger on the trigger.
Ros hesitated. “Wait!” he said. “Check it out. That zombitch is preggie and she’s dragging another one by a rope. What the f*ck!”
“Whoa,” said Guil, lowering his gun.
“We better take these guys prisoner. Call the corpse catchers.”
Guil took a walkie-talkie out and spoke into it. “Two of them,” he said. “Male and female. Not class-five aggressive, but not reduced to parts yet either. Moderate caution.”
I struggled to hold Eve back. Her arms were outstretched, reaching for the soldiers, and she was pulling me with all her slight might. I fell to the ground, her ball and chain, dead weight.
“Uhhnnnnhh,” she said.
Poor Eve, she’d really lost her looks since becoming a zombie. Her once-cute bangs were dirty and mottled with gore, and her eyes were filmed over, as haunting and evil as a vulture’s. At times I wanted to gouge her eyes out; they reminded me of what I must look like.
I look like the rest of them.
As we rot, we become more alike. What was distinct and individual in life—a Marilyn Monroe mole, red hair, big breasts, Buddy Holly glasses, a penchant for making puns or wearing yellow suspenders—is erased and replaced with the shuffle, the moan, the torn clothes, the stink, the pallor, the dripping flesh, and the insatiable yearning. As we decay, we become one entity. United we stand. Or sway, rather.
“We have to hold them for a few,” Guil said. “Catch crew is about a quarter-mile up the line.”
“Looks like the male’s doing that for us.”
“You think that’s his wife and baby? And maybe he’s trying to keep the family together?”
I nodded my head at Guil’s partial truth. In life, Eve had been a stranger. I wouldn’t have opened the door for her at the mall. In death, she was mine, and I felt as responsible for the child as if I’d sired it myself.
“Holy shit!” Ros said. “Did that corpse just nod his head? Is he communicating with us?” He walked closer.
“Careful,” Guil said.
“He’s got her on a pretty short leash.”
“It’s not just her you gotta worry about.”
Ros sidestepped the snapping Eve and approached where I lay on the shoulder, mashing my teeth into the white line, fighting for control. Because this was my opportunity to show the real me, the man beneath the animal. I watched Ros’s combat boots approach. He knelt down.
He was young, not more than twenty, and he looked corn-fed, with freckles and a wide, flat face like a cow pie, only ruddy and pink. His hair was the color of dried corn stalks and his eyes were cornflower blue and bright.
Behind them was what I needed.
“What’s up, fella?” he said, talking to me like I was a dog. “Can you hear me? Do you know what I’m saying? What are you doing with this here female and this rope?”
There was compassion in his voice. And the promise of help.
Stein, I tried to say, take me to Stein.
“Sheeeaiii!” is what came out.
“His eyes,” Ros said.
“From here he looks pretty zombified,” Guil said.
I rolled my head from side to side, shaking like an epileptic. I put my hand in my tweed jacket pocket and touched the papers there. My writing. Evidence of my cognition.
Ros was ten feet away. So close I could smell him. Everything in me sang: Brains for dinner. Brains for lunch. Brains for breakfast. Brains for brunch…
“I don’t know,” Ros said. “There might be someone home.”
The zombies in the cage were watching; I could feel them cheering me on like binge-drinking fraternity brothers. We were tingling together, the ant phenomenon. My shoulder felt like a hard-on. A zombie orgy of sucking and smooching and licking and touching and brains and brains and brains and brains…
I withdrew my hand from my pocket, turning my back on salvation, and went for it. I wish I could say I attacked like a cat, even a fat old house cat, but we all know how zombies move. I crawled toward him, hand over hand on the pavement, baring my teeth.
“Looks like he’s going for ya,” Guil said.
Ros stood up. “Roger that. I’d hate to shoot this one, though. They’ll want him for sure. Where are those f*ckers?”
“I’m gonna slow him down,” Guil said, “just in case.”
“Roger that.”
Guil tased me down the left side of my body, from shoulder to foot. My limbs twitched like a galvanized frog’s. He turned the Taser on Eve.
“Watch the baby,” Ros said. “They’ll probably wanna check it out. I don’t think we have too many pregnant ones, least not in this sector.”
Guil nodded and zapped Eve’s legs. She fell but continued pulling on the rope connecting us, single-minded in her pursuit.
Original sin. Eve did it again. She just can’t resist temptation.