Oh, hateful, hateful humans.
“Sorry for that, sir,” Ros said to the general. “The men have been under a lot of pressure lately. Everyone has.”
“It’s to be expected,” the general said, “during wartime. They’re only human.” The general pointed to the Queen. “And she’s not.”
“Woo-hoo!” one of the corpse catchers said. “But what a catch! Are they gonna give us a commendation or what? Maybe get interviewed on TV.”
“I watched her show every day with my mom,” another said, shaking his head. “And to see her like this, it just breaks my heart.”
“Where’d you find her?” the general asked.
“Over by the train station.”
“We didn’t know who it was at first. She had her face stuck in a dog. All we could see was her dress and that hair.”
“Stuckey was gonna go ahead and shoot, but I thought the hair looked familiar.”
“I fired in the air,” Stuckey said. “She looked up and I got a good look at her face. Even with the dog fetus hanging outta her mouth, I recognized her. Ha! Crazy goddamn world.”
“Mooaaahhhh!” said the Queen.
“Better corral her,” Guil said.
“Negative,” the general said. “I’ve ordered a photographer, should be touching down any minute, and I intend to corral this particular zombie myself. Take some souvenir pictures. For the wife, the papers, posterity, that sort of thing.”
“Like Abu Ghraib?” Ros asked.
“You’re in dangerous territory, soldier.”
I found myself liking Ros more and more. Cheeky bastard.
GUTS AND I rushed back to Joan, Eve, and Brad. We had to mobilize the crew before the photographer arrived. We had to execute my plan.
I stood in the center of the cage, Guts on my shoulders, the hockey mask protecting my injury from his little leg. And Guts, the star, the natural born leader, he laid out the plan, gesturing with his hands for the dumb zombies one last time.
To hold their interest, I threw out bits of brain I’d stored in my professor pockets. Saint Joan did her part, walking among them, caressing bite sites, securing bandages, sealing up holes. She was a born healer. I spied Brad and Eve mingling with the masses, holding hands. Young undead in love; I’d lost her to him.
No matter. I had a people to save. Freedom to secure.
We heard the whir of a helicopter and I made my way back to the bars. The photographer ducked under the chopper’s blades; she was in her twenties, with short bushy hair and wire-framed glasses. Touched with the beauty of youth, she was chunky in all the right places, like a thick cut of chuck roast-the strips of fat are the tastiest part.
The general held out his hand for the corpse catcher’s pole while the photographer read her light meter and lined up angles. She had both a thirty-five-millimeter and a digital camera and she started snapping away, her thighs pressing against her khakis like trussed-up turkeys.
She turned her lens on the cage. Instinctively I smiled. She brought the camera down to her waist and we made eye contact. I winked.
“General,” she said, “I think that zombie just smiled and winked at me.”
“Nonsense,” Ros said.
“A trick of the light,” said Guil.
“It’s what you want to see,” Ros said.
“A projection,” Guil said. “Like anthropomorphism.”
I backed away from the bars and took my place in the center of the group. Guts scurried around our legs, positioning zombie elbows, fingers, and hands on bite sites. We had to be connected. We had to throb as one.
Saint Joan was next to me. My knee touched her knee and her hand was on my shoulder. We tingled, an army of red ants itching for a fight.
The door opened to let in the newbie and we moved forward in tight formation.
“Is this normal?” the general asked.
The camera clicked in rapid succession.
“What the fuck?” Guil said.
“Who bandaged them?” the general asked. “Is that SOP?”
We advanced. Guil fired at us.
I heard the squawk of a walkie-talkie and Guts ran forward like a sprite, revealing his true superpower: He moved with the speed and agility of a human. When he returned, he handed me the device and I turned it off. How he wrested it from the guard, I’ll never know.
We moved forward, slow and sure. Methodical monsters. Zombies fell in front of me, shot in the head. We stepped on them. They made a soft carpet.
“I can’t control her!” the general said. “I’m losing her!”
The general dropped the long pole with a clank. The Queen of All Media picked it up, wielding it like nunchakus. She swung, missing the general but ramming the remaining three corpse catchers. The men fell down.
“Shoot her!” someone yelled.
“Negative! Hold your fire!” the general said. “That’s our prized catch. She is to be taken alive. That’s an order!”
“Actually,” Ros said, “I believe undead is the word you’re looking for.”
“I’ve had enough out of you!” the general yelled.
The Queen was free. With a pole in each hand, she knocked down Ros and Guil. Their guns clattered to the ground. Guts sprinted up, kicked the walkie-talkies and guns out of reach, and removed Ros’s helmet. The general fired and hit Guts in the back, but the urchin barely flinched. The general fired again and hit Ros in the arm. The soldier rolled in pain. Guts ran back to my side and presented me with the helmet, which I immediately donned. It had a Blink-182 sticker on it.
Brad Pitt Zombie, inspired, perhaps, by the bravery of Guts, stumbled forward and removed Guil’s helmet. Someone shot Brad in the head and his brains exploded in a star-spangled display of gore. Guil ran for cover.
“Noooooooooah!” Eve moaned. It was the closest to language I’d heard from her, such was her grief.
Emboldened by the protection of my brains, I grabbed Guil’s helmet out of Brad’s stiff arms and gave it to Joan, my second in command. Ros was lying on the ground a few feet away, shot and helpless, and, Lord forgive me, the timing was all wrong, my attention should have been on the melee and the escape, but the urge, the urge, the urge, always the procreant urge…I bit him on top of the head, scalping him.
Ah, creamy nougat of live human flesh, I adore thee. A thousand times better than cow or rabbit. Ros screamed. Guil ran to his side.
“Shoot me,” Ros said, clutching his friend’s collar.
“How could I?”
“Death is not anything. Death is not…,” Ros said.
“Life?”
“Death is the absence of presence. But living death is…”
“The presence of absence?” Guil said.
“But do I want to die?”
“Why would you?”
“Perhaps life as a zombie is better than no life at all,” Ros said.
“Roger that.”
The photographer ran away, her sweet fat untasted. The general fired aimlessly, pointlessly, until he ran out of bullets, stopped to reload, and was attacked by the hive. The general had read the script. He knew his part: corpulent, arrogant, dinner.
I took a few moments to chew on Ros’s hairy head while listening to him and Guil prattle. Gunshots whizzed around me. Humans emitted their death shrieks. In the distance reinforcements were running toward us, firing away.
“Wait with me, old friend,” Ros said. “The future.”
“The future?”
“It’s murky.”
“It always is.”
The Queen snuck up behind the babbling pair and bit Guil in the neck, making it officiaclass="underline" Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were undead.
Oh, gotta love those allusions.
Stringy veins hung from the Queen’s mouth like bean sprouts. I looked into her eyes; no one was home.
I left the three of them and pushed my way through the feeding frenzy surrounding the general. Zombies fell away, bowing as I marched past, paying homage to their liberator.