"I"m gonna pretend I didn"t hear that."
There was a shotgun blast.
"Got her!" Earl said.
"Good shot. Right in the head."
"Kind of seems like a waste though."
"She did look like your wife." He laughed.
"That ain"t funny. My wife is is one of "em." one of "em."
Poor man. The t.i.tle of his life"s movie? I Married a Zombie b.i.t.c.h I Married a Zombie b.i.t.c.h.
The men rolled up their windows and the truck picked up speed. Hidden under my tarp, I exercised self-control. Mindful restraint.
Denying my instincts, displaying the discipline of an ascetic monk, I took out my affirmation journal.
This is what I wrote: A To-Not-Do List 1. Do not smash the back window and attack the driver.
2. Do not climb on top of the cab and slap your b.l.o.o.d.y hand on the windshield.
3. Do not press your face against the gla.s.s and bare your teeth at Earl.
4. Do not eat the rednecks.
Oh, but their dull stupid brains. I reckon they"re tasty.
WE DROVE ALL night through the cornfields of the Midwest. Lying on my back, I peeked out of the tarp and up at the stars. Amazingly, they were still there. night through the cornfields of the Midwest. Lying on my back, I peeked out of the tarp and up at the stars. Amazingly, they were still there.
I may have prayed. If I believed in G.o.d I would have, but I was raised an atheist.
"G.o.d was wounded during World War One," my father taught me, "and died in the gas chambers of the Holocaust. Don"t believe any of that supernatural mumbo-jumbo."
My paternal grandparents were wealthy Jewish doctors who fled the n.a.z.is in 1937. My grandmother was the first woman to graduate from the University of Vienna. When they arrived in America, they had a strongbox full of diamonds and identification papers. They had money tucked away in a Swiss bank account. And they had their lives and their children by the hand.
They left their drapes and Turkish rugs, pots and pans, real estate and religion to the n.a.z.is. For all I know, Hitler himself slept in their oak four-poster bed underneath the feather duvet and on top of the dozens of pillows Oma kept fluffed and spotless. Oma and Opa never went back to Vienna, but Oma often talked about what they left behind.
Her stories ended the same way every time: "And that, kleine kleine Jack, is how the Boorsteins became the Barneses." Jack, is how the Boorsteins became the Barneses."
I have Viennese property I could claim. There"s an apartment building and a house. A pea patch and some vacant lots. Lucy begged me to take her to my ancestral home for our honeymoon, but I refused.
"Too painful?" she asked.
"Too boring," I lied.
We honeymooned in the Caribbean instead, where Lucy wore a bikini and ran into the ocean, her heels almost touching the crescent moons of her bottom. She looked over her shoulder at me and I chased after her, grabbing her by the waist and kissing her; she was meatier then and I adored her.
"Float like you"re dead," she"d said, treading water.
I rolled face-first into the sea, my arms splayed out, my legs hanging straight down. Lucy jumped on, straddling me piggyback style.
I dove underwater then, sunken with the weight of my wife. I could hear her giggling above me and I swam as hard as I could, breaking the surface like a dolphin, Lucy riding me like a nymph.
If only Lucy were with me as the truck bounced along. She would have made a child"s game out of our concealment. Hide and Seek or Kick the Can.
Lightning flashed and it started to rain. I pulled the tarp over my head, my fingers leaving behind a thick coat of crud, sticky as glue.
Fat raindrops. .h.i.t the tarp; each one sounded like a nail pounding me deeper into my coffin.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE TRUCK STOPPED at a TA Travel Center in the middle of that G.o.dforsaken, corn-infested state. It was morning, the sky was clear, and the area appeared to be free of zombies. Humans milled about, filling up their gas tanks, gathering food and drink, exchanging information and gossip. No money changed hands, indicating a ma.s.sive breakdown in the economy as well as society as a whole. Nothing is more integral to America than the acc.u.mulation of wealth. And if no one paid for anything, no one made a profit. at a TA Travel Center in the middle of that G.o.dforsaken, corn-infested state. It was morning, the sky was clear, and the area appeared to be free of zombies. Humans milled about, filling up their gas tanks, gathering food and drink, exchanging information and gossip. No money changed hands, indicating a ma.s.sive breakdown in the economy as well as society as a whole. Nothing is more integral to America than the acc.u.mulation of wealth. And if no one paid for anything, no one made a profit.
In the wake of the Zombie Apocalypse, humanity had gone commie. Zombie Joe McCarthy must be scratching at the walls of his crypt.
As soon as Earl and the driver went inside the truck stop, I peered over the top of the bed. Seeing no one in the immediate vicinity, I climbed out.
My stomach was a vast and empty black hole.
I lumbered from car to car, hiding behind wheels and trunks, pretending to be an injured soldier in a Vietnam War movie. Charlie got my shoulder, I radioed in. Turned it into pork for his stir-fry.
I watched the humans through the windows of the truck stop. Cl.u.s.tered in groups, dispensing soda from the fountain, unwrapping Snickers bars, leafing through Field and Stream Field and Stream. The women fondled molded plastic angels, slipping them into their purses. More for protection than decoration, I imagined. Oh, Archangel Michael, made in China, save me from the vampiric undead; end this eternal waking nightmare.
Inside the curly heads of those ladies were their brains: beautiful, bountiful, bubbly, bewitching, bedazzling brains.
I was thirteen years old again, beholding my first pair of b.o.o.bs, only this longing was beyond s.e.xual. Swelling to G.o.dlike proportions, my desire eclipsed the sun.
I shuffled past a white El Dorado tucked in the far side of the lot and my shoulder tingled. There was movement in the front seat. I looked in and there she sat, a young woman no more than twenty-five, staring back at me with eyes so large and full of fright the irises had disappeared.
What she was doing in the parking lot alone, I"ll never know. Nor do I care.
I tried the handle. Locked. She scrunched down in her seat and put her hands over her head. Not a fighter, this one. More like an ostrich. I wondered where her protector was. Undoubtedly she had one, a pretty woman like her.
I used to look at women and see hips and a.s.s, hair and s.n.a.t.c.h. How pedestrian that seems now. Leave procreation to the living. I"ll take gray matter.
Then I thought: Don"t eat the whole thing, Jack. Bite her, just enough for a snack. Quell the riotous beast within, infect her with the virus, and take her for your mate. Your Eve.
She was pale, alabaster even, with short dark hair cut into Louise Brooks bangs. I pointed at her and she put her hand over her mouth. With her wide, terrified eyes and the French tips on her nails, she looked like a 1950s scream queen.
I scanned the area for a weapon and located a tire iron. What else? So far, my postlife had been cinematic, a travesty of a zombie movie, with the literary addition of a tragic and self-conscious hero, a misunderstood creature with which to sympathize. Of course there"d be a handy weapon to help him!
And don"t feel guilty for your empathy. You"re supposed to identify with me, causing you to question what it means to be human and moral-and to be grateful for your own miserable lot in life. So go ahead and sympathize. Construct me as the "other."
Let me be your monster.
I grabbed the tire iron with both hands, climbed onto the hood of the car, and raised the tool over my head. At the pinnacle of the arc, the muscles in my rotten shoulder shifted, a chunk of meat detached, and my grip slipped. I tottered. Human voices drifted from around the corner. Eve stared at me, her expression a mixture of terror and fascination, attraction and repulsion. She looked, above all else, curious. As for me, I felt sublime.
I brought the tire iron down and the windshield buckled and cracked in such a way that I was able to rip it out in one piece. I had no idea that was how windshields were constructed. I expected something much more theatrical, the sound of gla.s.s shattering into a million pieces, not a muted thunk of splintered plastic.
But no matter. Either way I would have my woman.
Eve screamed as she scrambled for the door. I wish I could say I was too fast for her, but I wasn"t. We both played our parts well. She was the petrified and b.u.mbling victim; I was the ruthless pursuer. Yawn.
"Don"t," she said when I grabbed her by the arm. "I"m pregnant."
I looked closely at Eve"s stomach. She was five or six months along. Showing, but not huge.
Jackpot! And baby makes three. I"d have a brand-new family and a shot at happiness.
Then Eve said she was starving and hadn"t had a bite in a while. So I bit her.
Just kidding. At least I have my sense of humor.
OH, BUT I did bite her. On the thigh. And her thigh was the fartiest of French cheeses, the briniest of anchovies. There was the thinnest layer of fat surrounding her muscle-clearly she had been a runner or tennis player-and it was enough to satisfy me. For the time being. did bite her. On the thigh. And her thigh was the fartiest of French cheeses, the briniest of anchovies. There was the thinnest layer of fat surrounding her muscle-clearly she had been a runner or tennis player-and it was enough to satisfy me. For the time being.
I chose the thigh for several reasons. First, it was firm yet still jiggly, the kind of thigh that looks good in short shorts. And I"ve always preferred the dark meat.
Second, a bite on the thigh would be out of sight. Even though my p.e.n.i.s is as gangrenous as the rest of my extremities and s.e.xual desire is but a dim memory, I still like to look at an attractive woman.
My final reason was Darwinian: I wanted to give Eve just a flesh wound, avoiding tendons and bones so she would have an advantage in our struggle for survival. When running from humans with guns or chasing humans with brains, every a.s.set counts.
After the bite, I dragged Eve by her hair across the parking lot and toward a Mickey D"s. Perfectly Neanderthal, I know, but desperate times...
We huddled in the restaurant"s kitchen. It smelled greasy, repugnant. I never liked fast food as a human. That was for the obese proletariat. Let them have their Big Macs and heart attacks. I ate endive and goat cheese. All the same, there I was, scrunched under a fryer: hunted, haunted, and hungry.
And I still hadn"t peed or shat.
Eve pa.s.sed out immediately and when she awoke, I was writing. She put her hand over her unborn child and stared at me. She was growing paler. She would be with me soon.
Cue gothic screams. Cut to a shot of a deserted moor.
"What are you doing?" she asked.
I opened my mouth and out gurgled black blood and a low rumble.
"Can I see?" She held out her hand.
I clasped my notes to my chest like a teenage girl hiding her diary from her brother. I shook my head. Eve moved closer.
How I wanted her! I was a date rapist, Multiple Miggs smelling Clarice"s c.u.n.t, Jack the Ripper, Josef Mengele dissecting his twins, the Zodiac Killer. The whole pantheon. I was out of control. Poe"s Imp of the Perverse struck me and I was obsessed with one thought and one thought only: Eat her, eat her, EAT HER BRAINS EAT HER BRAINS!
Dear G.o.d. Could a monster like me even have a mate?
Her hand was extended in a gesture of friendship. I noticed, for the first time, that she had a severe overbite, more than an overbite; her teeth were buck and coated with slimy plaque. I wondered what that plaque tasted like. When she opened her mouth, a string of saliva connected her bottom and top teeth. Little gobs of spittle collected in the corners of her lips when she spoke.
"Can I help you?" she asked. "You look, I don"t know, scared or something."
Inarticulate brute that I am, I yowled in response. I sounded like Chewbacca.
"You can, like, write? Can all of you?"
She leaned closer to me and her hand, so transparent and thin I could see the blue veins underneath, touched the spiral binding of my notebook.
I moaned and bit that hand clean off.
Her bone stared up at me. Yellowish white but pure nonetheless. Blood gushed from her veins. I scuttled over to the cash registers and watched her as I ate her hand, which was ropy and bony. Far too scant for anything more than an appetizer.
Finger food is the punch line to this joke.
At least, I reasoned, if reason one can when crouched on the floor munching on a pinky, she would die and be resurrected sooner this way.
Her wrist was a geyser of blood, Old Faithful spilling onto the oily floor.
Soon the virus would staunch the blood flow, and by nightfall, the transformation would be complete. My bride and I could get on the road-two homeless zombies on a spiritual quest. Searching for our maker.
EVE WAS IN her final stages, incoherent, rolling on the floor, vomiting up her soul. The virus had devoured enough healthy cells to render her unfit for consumption. Utterly inedible. her final stages, incoherent, rolling on the floor, vomiting up her soul. The virus had devoured enough healthy cells to render her unfit for consumption. Utterly inedible.
My question: Why do I write? To be more precise, how am I able to write? I can"t talk, I can hardly walk, and I certainly can"t play the guitar. And yet I can hold a pencil, I can string letters and words and sentences together in a way that makes sense. This must be how the first caveman artist felt when his clan finally understood his hieroglyph meant water or hunter or s.e.x or G.o.d. Are those not the basics? Man, woman, water, G.o.d.
And now add brains to the list.
If the virus melts the brain as they say it does, shutting down the frontal lobe, then part of my cognitive function is unaffected, uninfected. I either possess an innate resistance to some aspects of the virus or I am Zombie Adam, a bona fide mutation, the founding member of a new race.
In life, I wrote daily. I made my living writing articles, editorials, and books. I composed e-mails and PowerPoint presentations for my cla.s.ses and colleagues. I occasionally blogged. Perhaps it"s muscle memory. Is Stephen King still writing? Is Joyce Carol Oates? And the poets who squeeze out three lines a day-where is our Rimbaud?
History needed a zombie to record his experience. Call it creative nonliving fiction. We needed Ovid, Shakespeare, Herodotus. A poet to tell our side of the story. And since Johnny Cash wasn"t coming back from the dead, it was up to me. Luckily, I was made for the job.